Is international football
migration simply another
type of labour migration?
The politics of migration through the lens of international
football migration from Africa to Europe
Photo: Early morning jog for trainee players from
the Kwahu Tafo Academy in Mpraeso, Ghana*
Benjamin Bowman, EU50605 – The Politics of Migration. 6th May, 2011
*
Photo credit: Nikki Rixon, http://www.nikkirixon.com (Rixon 2010).
This photo is reproduced for academic use with photographer’s permission.
Benjamin Bowman
EU50605
Is international football migration
simply another type of labour migration?
06.05.2011
Professional football has been heavily affected by globalization and commercialization,
particularly in Western Europe’s rich domestic leagues where commercial influences on the
sport have been strongest. The migration of professional footballers is fundamental to the
modern game, with the best athletes from poorer peripheral leagues flowing to world
football’s rich core in England, Italy, Germany, Spain and France.
This essay applies general theories of economic migration to the international flow of
athletes playing, or seeking to play, football in professional leagues globally, and especially
the flow of African footballers to Europe. An assessment of possible theoretical approaches
to understanding professional football migration is presented, and a theoretical analysis for
the commoditization of football playing migrants is proposed. Ghana is used for
illustrations where possible both for its illustrative use and for continuity.
Big leagues and big money: Neoclassical & push-pull economic theories
“[In Ghana] no club can pay you even $100 a month... I have a family, I have to buy
clothes, I have to eat. Somebody pops up, ‘I have a club for you in India, they will pay you
$2000 a month’. Do you think I will stop? I will go.”
Nii Lamptey, former player, now coaching at Sekondi Eleven Wise FC
(Quoted in interview, Darby 2010, 36)
Neoclassical theory develops on economic analyses of migration that date to the 1800s, and
is an individualistic theory linking migration to the rational choice of the migrating person,
who moves based on their comparing the relative costs and benefits to remaining where
they are or moving to an alternative location. Other contributing factors, from government
restrictions on migration to geographical barriers, are considered intervening obstacles
constraints that distort the rational market (Castles and Miller 1998, 20-21). According to
the theory, this rational market operates through a supply and demand nexus fuelled by
unbalance between the labour forces in different countries. Thus, in a country that enjoys a
plentiful labour force relative to capital wages will be lower than in a country where labour
is scarcer and in greater demand; workers in the first country will migrate to the second
country, making a rational choice to chase higher wages.
Castles and Miller (1998) explain push-pull theory to be a modern expansion to the
traditional neoclassical interpretation. A combination of ‘pull’ factors from the receiving
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Benjamin Bowman
EU50605
Is international football migration
simply another type of labour migration?
06.05.2011
country – e.g. demand for labour, better social opportunities, political freedoms – and
‘push’ factors in the sender country – e.g. demographic growth, fewer economic
opportunities, political oppression – drive individuals to make the rational choice to
migrate (Castles and Miller 1998, 20). While neoclassical theory proposes that migration is a
purely economic phenomenon that will eventually stop when labour markets reach
equilibrium, push-pull theory includes various social and political factors and does not rule
out perpetual migration. Modern push-pull theory does, however, contend that migration is
a reaction to certain exceptional factors that convince an individual to migrate despite a
natural human tendency towards inertia (according to Kivisto and Faist 2010, 36) and
intervening obstacles as mentioned above.
Certainly, economic disparities between employment in European leagues and African ones
have contributed to the migration of Africa’s professional footballers northwards. Wealthy
European clubs offer economic opportunities to skilled players that simply don’t exist in
Africa (Darby 2009, 153). In Ghana, for example, the average salary for a Premier League
player is US$100-$300 plus bonuses for good performance; two successful clubs – Accra
Hearts of Oak and Asante Kotoko – dominate the domestic league and pay far higher wages,
with players for other teams languishing with “meagre” pay and poor facilities, not least
because poor teams cannot afford grass and use sand instead (Darby 2009, 153). The
economic nexus may factor in with a family’s rational decision to send a son or father1
abroad, in order that he might send remittances home as the family breadwinner: Nii
Lamptey, quoted above, is an example of a remittance-returning footballer (Darby 2010, 36).
Theoretically speaking, migrant footballers that send their earnings home can be regarded
not just individual actors but members of “webs of group affiliations” (Kivisto & Faist 2010,
38). Scholars like Massey have pointed out that families in poor regions can utilize a family
member’s loyal affiliation to the group and send him/her abroad, in order to return
remittances as a means for diversifying income and reducing the risk of poverty (Massey et
al. 1993, 436). African families now consider exporting their sons to foreign leagues an
“escape route from poverty” for the entire family (Darby 2010, 36): it has become accepted
1
Men are far more likely than women to migrate seeking work as footballers, though there
is some recruitment of female football players from African countries by American
universities, notably Robert Morris College, Illinois (Poli 2006b, 404)
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EU50605
Is international football migration
simply another type of labour migration?
06.05.2011
for families with football playing members that, in one journalist’s words, “...as long as the
boy is not in Ghana and going overseas, even to Kazakhstan, they [the parents] will let him
go. So, they know at the end of the month they have some income coming back to them
even if it is only $200-$300. So the boy becomes the breadwinner” (Durosimi Thomas,
quoted in Darby 2010, 36).
The strongest case for using these primarily economic theories is to model migration
alongside wage differentials. The removal of boundaries to migrating footballers (by
globalization generally and by specific cases like the Bosman transfer ruling) have expanded
recruitment by top clubs to encompass the entire world (Bale 2003, 104), and recruitment by
these top clubs is increasingly a matter of locating young talent abroad and ‘pulling’ it to
Europe with economic incentives (Maguire and Stead 1998, 62). Nevertheless, economic
migration theories that hold migration generally to be a function of demand and supply in
the labour market meet significant challenges from observed data. To give an example, the
labour market for footballers across Europe is so well supplied with players that there aren’t
enough jobs to go around: in the early to mid-2000s the number of players without
employment “increased spectacularly” in every European league (Poli 2006a, 283), fuelled,
it has been conjectured, by the economic strategy of Europe’s rich clubs whose academies
produce a glut of skilled workers in order to drive down the labour price (Poli 2006a, 283).
As Maguire and Pearton write, “although economics play a crucial part in determining the
patterns of football migration, they are by no means the only factor involved. Rather, sets of
interdependencies contour and shape the global sports migration... [and] politics, history,
geography and culture all affect the structuring of football migrant trails” (Maguire and
Pearton 2000, 188); Bourg (1989, in Poli 2006a, 283) also draws attention to the more
complex, possibly exploitative strategies employed by powerful actors in the system beyond
the push and pull of wage differentials. In other words, push and pull theories are accurate
to a point, but can better explain reality when used in combination with the study of other
socio-political factors affecting football migration.
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EU50605
Is international football migration
simply another type of labour migration?
06.05.2011
Following in the footsteps: migrant trails to Europe
'One top Spanish club has three young Cameroonian kids on their youth books. The boys
are 10, 11, 12. So few make it, but they all come, more and more each year, and they are
getting younger all the time. Thousands of kids to France.”
Jean-Claude Mbvoumin, Culture Foot Solidaire (McDougall 2008)
To more accurately plot what Maguire and Pearton (2000) called football migration trails,
we can combine theories focussing on the economic nexus, as outlined above, with more
ethnographic theories investigating the culture and society of professional footballers.
The role of migrant networks appears vital to understanding international football
migration. Migrating footballers tend, like other migrants, to follow established paths of
migration: they tend to travel to former colonial masters like France (Lanfranchi & Taylor,
2001), Belgium or Portugal, for instance, even if these countries do not have such
prestigious or high-paying football leagues, though exploitation of former colonies on the
part of football elites in European countries may partially explain this tendency (Bale, 2004;
Darby et al., 2007; Darby, 2007). This essay has already discussed how in some African
countries there is a cultural understanding that playing professional football abroad is a
realistic way for young people to escape poverty. This cultural phenomenon is magnified
when a country has, like Ghana, a successful and prestigious national team, and iconic
superstar footballers whose footsteps to Europe young hopefuls would like to tread (Darby
2010, 37). The profile and success of key Ghanaian players at European clubs throughout the
1980s, ‘90s, and ‘00s – not to mention president Kwame Nkrumah’s strong support for
Ghana’s national team, the Black Stars, which by its success in football tournaments has
developed into a side of real international renown – has developed a path for migration and
established cultural and economic links with the rich clubs of Europe (Darby 2010, 19).
Germany and England are by far the most common destinations for Ghanaian footballers,
Germany due to a “migration pathway” forged by successful and popular Ghanaian players
migrating to the Bundesliga, and England not least for the cultural ties inherent in a shared
colonial history and language (Darby 2010, 33).
In the modern football world these pathways are constructed and maintained by agents
exploiting the “migration industry” in the same way scholars have identified “recruitment
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EU50605
Is international football migration
simply another type of labour migration?
06.05.2011
agents, money lenders, document specialists, traffickers and couriers,” (Amin 2004, 229)
among various intermediaries facilitating migration (as discussed in, for example, Castles
and Miller 1998, 26). In world football generally the key facilitators to migration are
professional agents who broker deals between players and clubs (Miller 2007, 14-15).
In West Africa, and in Ghana specifically, perhaps the most important facilitator for a
football player’s migration is the football academy. Ghana has a strong institutional base for
coordinated youth development at football academies that dates back to the 1960s and
national policies for football training led by Kwame Nkrumah’s government, which has
trained highly skilled young players who prove their talents representing Ghana’s highly
successful youth national team, the Black Satellites (Quansah 2001, Darby et al. 20o7, 151).
Historically, academies are run by Ghanaian teams ostensibly to train talented young
players, but functioning as centres for talent export. For example, the academy of Liberty
Professionals FC in Accra, which has served as a migration facilitator for some of Ghana’s
most prestigious players including George Appiah, Asamoah Gyan, Michael Essien, Sulley
Muntari, and John Pantsil, trades on previous successes and national reputation to benefit
from the migration industry. Hearts of Oak FC have a particular reputation for training
young players in a well-funded academy, achieving continental success, and then selling its
successful players on (Darby et al 2007, 150). In short, young players are trained then sold at
a profit (Darby 2010, 38). The role of Ghanaian football academies is key to Ghana’s
establishment among Africa’s top three exporters of sporting talent at the turn of the
millennium (Bale 2004).
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EU50605
Is international football migration
simply another type of labour migration?
06.05.2011
European academies in Ghana: a World Systems approach
“Europe's leading clubs conduct themselves increasingly as neo-colonialists who don't give
a damn about heritage and culture, but engage in social and economic rape by robbing the
developing world of its best players.”
Sepp Blatter, president of football’s governing body, FIFA (BBC News 2003)
In migration theory, much modern attention has been paid to the possibility that a wealthy
industrialized core uses migration to exploit poorer countries and their human and natural
resources. This idea is hypothesized, among others, by Wallerstein (in Kivisto & Faist 2010,
44-46) and by Massey et al. (1993, 447-448). This theory, sometimes called a World Systems
approach, expects the global economy to penetrate poorer peripheral regions, resulting in
labour migration along strong “material and cultural” links (Massey et al. 1993, 447) to
richer core countries, especially links that were already established in the colonial era, with
the end result that people living in the global periphery are exploited by the core as cheap
labour.
Since the early 1990s, migration trails between African football academies and Europe have
been established and strengthened by the richest European clubs in two ways. Firstly,
European clubs set up and fund new training centres or invest in existing ones, in exchange
for having first claim on the skilled labour these academies produce, in what Darby, Akindes
and Kirwin call “a classic neo-colonial strategy” that exploits cheap skilled labour,
especially in politically stable countries like Ghana, as a natural resource (2007, 150). The
Dutch club Feyenoord, for example, runs the largest academy in Ghana and its own satellite
football club in the Ghanaian premier league, providing academic and footballing education
to local young people with the publicly expressed goal to provide a steady flow of young
talent back to its parent club in Rotterdam (Derby et al. 2007, 150-151) Similar academies
are run by non-profit organizations (such as the Right to Dream Academy near Akosombo,
Ghana) and large national and multinational companies and investors, such as Red Bull
Academy FC in Sogakope, which is closely linked as a talent feeder to Red Bull’s other
sporting interests, New York Red Bulls and Red Bull Salzburg. Secondly, powerful European
clubs sometimes purchase controlling stakes in African football teams: AFC Ajax of
Amsterdam did so in 1999 when it bought a majority share of Ghanaian team Obuasi
Goldfields, though it has since sold its stock due to poor returns on its investment (Derby et
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EU50605
Is international football migration
simply another type of labour migration?
06.05.2011
al. 2007, 151). Migration trails are also utilized by successful former players who set up
academies in their home countries, often with a philanthropic intent to “give something
back” to their home communities by using money earned abroad to educate and enable
young hopefuls to follow in their success. Former Ghana international Abedi Pele runs one
such academy along with the French footballer Patrick Viera in Senegal, in order to “do
something for the country and to use football... as a means to educate kids” (Darby et al.
2007, 152). Some academies are run by foreign investors, and sometimes national elites, as
business ventures, such as Planète Champion in Burkina Faso which is joint-owned by a
French businessman and the national President Compoaré, nurturing football recruits and
“selling them to the highest overseas bidder” while providing local vocational education
that is somewhat questionable (Darby et al. 2007, 153). Further academies – some
registered, but many informal and unregistered (Darby et al. 2007, 153) – simply spring up
all over Africa run by African and European speculators hoping to derive income from
facilitating hopeful young players’ migration. These ad-hoc academies train young players
and put them on show in informal, but well attended international tournaments unaffiliated
with clubs or federations and outside national and international regulations that safeguard
young players from unscrupulous agents (Darby 2007a, 154). The result, according to E.B.
Tshimanga, is that young African players are collected in huge talent fairs, where they are
prey for intermediaries who acquire young talent and promote their migration to richer
leagues outside legal frameworks – by using tourist visas, for example – exploiting the
players and their families, usually with unscrupulous contracts (Tshimanga 2001, cited by
Poli 2006b, 411).
According to scholars like Darby (2007b), Poli (2006a, 2006b) and Bale (2004), academies
play a major role in a world system that keeps African countries, and African players,
impoverished by “muscle drain”, the constant draining migration of talent away from
sending countries. Though scholars tend away from the sort of hyperbole Sepp Blatter used
against European clubs, quoted above, academic research in general does suggest that
international football migration serves to perpetuate underdevelopment in African
domestic football, de-skilling African football’s labour force and rendering African clubs
and players dependent on finance and training from abroad, in relationships Darby terms
“colonial” (Darby 2007b, 495-496).
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Benjamin Bowman
EU50605
Is international football migration
simply another type of labour migration?
06.05.2011
This essay so far has taken a rather pessimistic view on international football migration.
This reflects general dismay in academic literature towards footballers’ migration,
particularly from Africa to Europe, and footballers’ exploitation by the migration industry
both abroad, and at home in Africa. This is not to say that international football migration
has no positive impact on players. The sport’s globalization, and the commoditization of
athletic talent, have lifted barriers to skilled migrants and allowed them to seek higher
wages and living standards abroad (Cornelissen & Solberg 2010, 299). For those skilled
workers that ‘make it’ – even if they never become superstars – the financial benefits and
access to higher living standards and better training facilities are enormous; meanwhile
skilled African players have enriched football leagues and thrilled audiences around the
world (Darby 2007b, 495). Also, the neo-colonial and world systems theoretical models
cannot fully account for the variegated destinations African footballers migrate to,
including many countries that cannot be claimed to have ex-colonial or neo-colonial ties to
Africa, nor are destination countries for the African footballing exodus always at football’s
economic “core” (Darby 2007b, 447). While theories like Wallerstein’s can help shed light
on certain migratory forms and phenomena like, perhaps, football academies, these theories
must be combined with other theoretical frameworks if we are to fully understand
international football migration.
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Benjamin Bowman
EU50605
Is international football migration
simply another type of labour migration?
06.05.2011
Rare exports: Proposing a theoretical dichotomy between skilled labour
expectation and human commoditization
'These are my boys,' he says. 'I have their contracts, their parents' signatures; they will go
for trials in Europe when they are ready. We have already had some interest from a Paris
Saint-Germain scout. The scouts come here and comb the city, looking at boys, looking for
a glimmer, that piece of magic. Both these kids have it.”
Isaac Aloti, coach at an unlicenced football school, Accra (McDougall, 2008)
This essay has explained how international football migration can be described using
several theories that apply to labour migration in general. As Darby points out, these
theories are useful, but do not entirely explain some phenomena that are unique to
international football migration (2007b, 447).
I propose that football migrants have a remarkable double identity. They are, on the one
hand, skilled labourers to whom migration theory applies as any other economic migrant.
Meanwhile, the global football economy treats football migrants as an economic
commodity. Richer clubs extract the best players from peripheral countries, add value by
refining them in academies, professional training, and competition, and finally sell them on
at a profit.
When a young person in a sending country decides to embark on a career as a footballer, his
choice is socially constructed as a legitimate path that will take a skilled young player out to
foreign, more prosperous workplaces. The African media play a key role in constructing this
identity, the hopeful young athlete playing his way to the global football jackpot (Poli
2006b, 407). African popular culture pays no regard to football migration’s unhappy truth:
the vast majority of hopeful athletes either fail in their attempts to migrate or end up in
precarious situations, sometimes worse off than when they started (Poli 2006b, 407).
Instead, it holds up a few superstar individuals, usually players from modest economic
backgrounds, as living myths; these multi-millionaire heroes, whose exploits in foreign
leagues are better reported than those in local teams and who are champions in commercial
advertising and political campaigns alike, are the dominant image in reflection to which an
African footballer’s identity is constructed (Poli 2006b, 407-408).
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EU50605
Is international football migration
simply another type of labour migration?
06.05.2011
In the sending country, intermediaries like football academies and local clubs realize these
hopeful, determined – and sometimes highly talented – athletes are valuable economic
commodities. Giulianotti (2007) writes that sending country intermediaries consider
athletes precisely as natural resources to be extracted, burnished, and sold at a profit, in the
same manner as coffee beans or diamonds (2007, 45-46). The most important difference, I
would argue, between football players and natural resources is that football players can
accrue value and be traded along global chains between buyers, trainers, and sellers. For
example, Poli’s work on the economic status of African footballers in European leagues
concluded that most African players plied their trades in weaker secondary or tertiary
leagues and not the top, most economically attractive leagues in receiver countries (Poli
2006a). This, he concludes, is because African players have reiterative value. Africans are
readily available and willing to move, can be bought more cheaply and paid less than
European footballers, and once they have proved their skills in lower European leagues they
can be sold at a profit to richer clubs and leagues (Poli 2006a, 298-299), continuing the
value chain. Football clubs assess a player’s value as an asset based on their initial cost,
wage demands, performance and trajectory, and marketability, with a keen eye on achieving
the maximum profit from the player as an asset either by using his skilled labour to propel
the team to sporting – and, consequently, commercial – success or, more often, investing in
and adding value to the player to maximize his potential as an economic asset2. Today’s
migrating African football players are, therefore, considered valuable exports in their
sending countries and sources for profit in receiving ones. Over the past few decades it has
become acceptable – and not abusive (Poli 2006b, 405) – to describe a footballer as a
commodity from which value added chains are developed (Poli 2006b, 405). The value added
can be very high. In 2000, the Corsican club SC Bastia signed Michael Essien from this home
club Liberty Professionals FC in Accra, Ghana, for free; Bastia trained and then “sold” him
to a larger, richer club, Olympique Lyonnais for €8 million in 2003; Essien’s skilled
performances with Ghana’s national team and his professional club won him (and
Olympique Lyonnais’ accountants) a transfer, valued at about €35 million, to London’s
Chelsea FC just two years later (Poli 2006b, 405).
2
For a case study investigation with a human resources/accounting view on football players
as human assets, see Morrow (1996).
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Benjamin Bowman
EU50605
Is international football migration
simply another type of labour migration?
06.05.2011
To sum up the various theories discussed in this essay, I would propose that the skilled
labour identity/economic asset dichotomy to African players is illustrated by the disparity
between migrants’ expectations and the actual conditions for African footballers in Europe,
and that this dichotomy may be unique, at least in the current historical moment, to
international football. African football players identify with football as a socially and
economically rewarding profession that facilitates skilled migration to desirable
destinations. This identity construction is accelerated by African popular culture and new
globalized forms of sport, especially when transmitted by electronic media, that break down
traditional geographic boundaries to identity. African players identify themselves as skilled
labourers, using their talents to follow push-pull economic and social factors towards
attractive destinations, especially in Europe. In fact, they are better understood as human
commodities that are bought and traded by powerful actors in rich countries, with their
migration paths – strongly influenced by cultural, geographic, historical, and linguistic
proximities (Poli 2006b, 410) – appearing to be somewhat predictable using world-systems
or neo-colonial theories of migration. Some phenomena of international football migration
do match with other types of migration: the use of intermediaries to acquire work permits in
the country of destination, for example (Poli 2006b, 410; Taylor 2007, 6). The
commoditization of footballers, however, means international football migration is not
exactly comparable to other types of labour migration. As a case in point, labour markets in
European football – which give players little say in where they end up, especially African
players who are generally lower paid, more reliant on intermediaries, more likely to be
signed to exploitative contracts (Poli 2006a, Darby et al 2007) – use footballers as economic
assets to be trained, bought and sold in value chains, or else used as skilled labour than can
be paid lower wages, particularly by clubs in lower European leagues (Poli 2006b, 411).
Whether this dichotomy between self-identification as skilled labour and human
commoditization in actual fact can be matched in examples from wider migration theory
requires further investigation. As a starting point, I would suggest the skilled labor
identity/human commoditization theory be tested on other sports, such as baseball (as in
Koble, 2009). It follows that migrant footballers might have theoretical counterparts in
human trafficking, maybe concerning sex workers (with Molland, 2010 and Truong 2009
possible starting points), especially given the roles played by powerful and unscrupulous
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Benjamin Bowman
EU50605
Is international football migration
simply another type of labour migration?
06.05.2011
intermediaries in both footballer and sex worker migration, though this is merely intuitive
conjecture and beyond the limitations of this essay.
Conclusion
International football migration can to some extent be theorized using the same tools as
any other type of labour migration. This essay has discussed how neoclassical and push-pull
economic theory, migrant trails, and world systems theory can help us understand football
migration from Africa to Europe. On the other hand, some facets of international football
migration appear to be unique, notably the commoditization of self-identified skilled
labourers by the global football economy and its powerful actors and migration
intermediaries. The way footballers are traded as assets between clubs effectively turns
migrating athletes into a natural resource to be invested in, refined, and sold at a profit.
This is the overall picture of international football migration, and it’s not a pretty one.
African migrant footballers, believing they can follow skilled labour trails leading from
academies to lucrative contracts in Europe, often have their dreams dashed by a football
industry that considers them raw material in a global value chain.
Another type of labour migration? Not exactly. But the treatment of football migrants
paints a familiar picture. “Often”, as Raffaele Poli writes, “the African football player’s fate
in Europe is not so different from the fate of more ‘normal’ African migrants” (2006b, 412):
exploitation.
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EU50605
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simply another type of labour migration?
06.05.2011
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EU50605
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simply another type of labour migration?
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