To date, studies of sports labour migration have afforded little attention to analyses of how individual athletes relate to historical and macro-structural power relations and forces. In this article, we set out to develop a transnational perspective on sports labour migration, focusing particularly on migrants' achievement and maintenance of mobility as a key constituting factor in migratory movements. We argue that athletic mobility is an on-going process, a commodity that must continuously be achieved. The article provides material from an on-going PhD project concerning migratory routes between African and Scandinavian women's football, and focuses attention on a case study of Nigerian women footballers' migration out of their country of origin and into Scandinavian football clubs. The article concludes that, despite the unequal power relations that shape the global trade in athletic talent, sports migrants assert agency and control over important aspects of transnational movement and mobility.

This article provides an analysis of how Nigerian women migrants are represented and constructed as racial others by officials in the Scandinavian football clubs that recruit and employ them. Situated against scholarship on race, gender, and sport, within and outside the Scandinavian region, we highlight consistencies in stereotypical representations of black athletes. We use theories of racialisation to draw attention to how ideas about race and gender are mutually imbricated in shaping Scandinavian representations of Nigerian women football migrants. Based on interviews with Scandinavian football club officials, and Nigerian women football migrants, we expose and critique the ways in which Nigerian women's migration as professionals, and their competencies as athletes, are constantly undermined by racially inscribed representations.

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