What happens while the official looks the other way? Citizenship, transnational sports migrants and the circumvention of the state

Abstract

The era of transnational sport migration (TSM) has been one of heady celebration, seemingly free movement across borders, and lucrative business. The predominant (and outmoded) models of sport migration currently ignore state controls of migration. This paper brings the state back into analyses of TSM and looks at strategies migrants have used to skirt governmental attempts to control their movements. Understanding the issues surrounding state constructions of national citizenship is essential - both for this paper but also for migrants themselves in order to manipulate these controlling mechanisms to work in their favour. After identifying classificatory themes for determining national and professional status, this paper draws on examples that highlight states' attempts to control the movements of sport professionals. Using a combination of ethnographic material gathered over the past decade along with interviews and investigative reports, this article argues that an updated theory for understanding transnational sport migration must incorporate and reflect the actual experiences, routes and roots of TSM and the multiple forces that contour these processes

“I Just Go on Wi-Fi”: Imagining Worlds Through Professional Basketball Migrants’ Deployment of Information and Communication Technology

“…Reflecting on these observations, a move toward transnational approaches has occurred. This shift has sought to address some of the structural criticisms levied at earlier sport migration literature (See Carter, 2011b; Engh & Agergaard, 2015; Thorpe, 2017). Van der Meij and Darby (2017), for example, expand observations of West African migration in association football by elucidating a transnational approach that considers family and wider social relationships as part of the agency at the heart of these experiences.…”

Running for Korea: Rethinking of sport migration and in/flexible citizenship

“…As Appadurai (1990: 297) claims, moving persons “can never afford to let their imaginations rest too long, even if they wished to,” because of certain historical, economic, and political conditions. In such global dynamics of migration, nation-states and their juridical-legislative systems continue to play an essential role in defining and regulating labor power (Carter, 2011), as South Korea’s Special Naturalization substantiates.…”

“…Without giving up their original citizenship, if they sign an agreement to not exercise their rights as a foreign national during their stay in Korea and choose Korean citizenship, they are allowed to hold both citizenships (Cha, 2015). Given the citizenship’s importance as “a valuable piece of personal, social and political capital that can be deployed strategically within the global sport industry” (Carter, 2011: 229), the dual citizenship enables the subject to have more powerful capital as a migrating labor.…”

Olympic citizenship and the (un)specialness of the national vest: rethinking the links between sport and citizenship law

“…20 This is juxtaposed with the existence of nationality conditions with respect to access to employment in public service (Article 45(4) TFEU) and exercise of official authority (Article 51 TFEU), since the latter are deemed to require a special relation of allegiance to the state. The exclusion of non-nationals in such cases has also been 19 On the strategic change of citizenship and the ability of migrants to maintain relations in multiple localities simultaneously, see Carter (2011a).…”

“…19On the strategic change of citizenship and the ability of migrants to maintain relations in multiple localities simultaneously, see Carter (2011a). …”