Sport and Migration ─ Borders, Boundaries and Crossings

From Major League Baseball to English soccer’s Premier League, all successful contemporary professional sports leagues include a wide diversity of nationalities and ethnicities within their playing and coaching rosters. The international migration of sporting talent and labor, encouraged and facilitated by the social and economic undercurrents of globalization, mean that world sport is now an important case study for any student or researcher with an interest in international labor flows, economic migration, global demography or the interdependent world economy.

In this dazzling collection of papers, leading international sport studies scholars chart the patterns, policies and personal experiences of labour migration within and around sport, and in doing so cast important new light both on the forces shaping modern sport and on the role that sport plays in shaping the world economy and global society. Presenting original case studies of sports from European and African soccer to Japanese baseball to rugby union in New Zealand, the book makes an important contribution to our understanding of a wide range of issues within contemporary social science, such as national identity politics, economic structure and organization, north-south relations, imperial legacies and gender relations. This book is invaluable reading for students and researchers working in sport studies, human geography, economics or international business.

Joseph Maguire is Professor in Sociology of Sport in the School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences at the University of Loughborough, UK. He is a past President of the International Sociology of Sport Association and an executive board member of the International Council for Sports Science and Physical Education.
Mark Falcous is Senior Lecturer in the Sociology of Sport in the School of Physical Education at the University of Otago, New Zealand. He is an editorial board member for the Sociology of Sport Journal.

Introduction: Borders, Boundaries and Crossings: Sport, Migration and Identities Section 1: Patterns of Migration and Sport 1.From the South to Europe: A Comparative Analysis of African and Latin American Football Migration 2. "Why Tax Athletes' International Migration?" The Coubertobin Tax in a Context of Financial Crisis 3. Moving with the Bat and the Ball: the Migration of Japanese Baseball Labour 1912-2009 4. From the Soviet Bloc to the European Community: Migrating Professional Footballers in and out of Hungary Section 2: Bridgeheads in Migration and Sport 5. Preliminary Observations on Globalisation and the Migration of Sport Labour 6. Sports Labour Migration as a Global Value Chain: The Dominican Case 7. Net-Gains': Informal Recruiting, Canadian Players and British Professional Ice Hockey 8. "Have Board will Travel": Global Physical Youth Cultures and Transnational Mobility Section 3: Experiences of Migration and Sport 9. Migrants, Mercenaries, and Overstayers: Talent Migration in Pacific Island Rugby 10. Blade Runners: Canadian Migrants and European Ice Hockey 11. Female Football Migration: Motivational Factors for Early Migratory Processes Section 4: Identities in Migration and Sport 12. Globetrotters in Local Contexts: Basketball Migrants, Fans and Local Identities 13. Diaspora and Global Sports Migration: A Case Study in the English and New Zealand Context 14. Tries for the Nation?: International Rugby Players’ Perspectives on National Identity Section 5: Impacts of Migration on Sports and Societies 15. The New International Division of Cultural Labour and Sport 16. Transnational Athletes: Celebrities and Migrant Players in Fútbol and Hockey 17. Out of Africa: The Exodus of Elite African Football Talent to Europe 18. Touring, Travelling and Accelerated Mobilities: Team and Player Mobilities in New Zealand Rugby Union. Future Directions: Sporting Mobilities, Immobilities and Moorings