Publication: African football migration
African football migration. Aspirations, experiences and trajectories
By Paul Darby, James Esson and Christian Ungruhe with Manchester University Press
„African football migration. Aspirations, experiences and trajectories“ is a collaborative work from researchers located in the fields of human geography, social anthropology and sport sociology. It draws on ethnographic research conducted over a decade to unpack and offer fresh perspectives on the aspirations and experiences of youth and young men in post-colonial Africa as they seek to generate social mobility in and through sports-related migration. The book illustrates that beyond a fortunate few, the vast majority of those striving to improve their life chances through football migration experience involuntary immobility. It also reveals that many of those who are able to ‚go outside‘ encounter truncated careers at the margins of the football industry, mainly in Europe but increasingly in South-East Asia, followed by precarious post-playing career lives.
