African Football Migration: Aspirations, Experiences and Trajectories

Description: African football migration offers essential coverage of why and how African players have become actors in the global football industry. It reveals the meanings associated with migration in post-colonial Africa, and the implications of (im)mobility for the personal and professional life trajectories of youth and young men across the continent.

Review Quotes:

Shortlisted for the British Society of Sports History's Lord Aberdare Literary Prize 2023
Honourable Mention - North American Society for the Sociology of Sport Outstanding Book Award 2023

'This discussion of a key element of the global labour market in contemporary sport manages to both straddle complex disciplinary boundaries - sociology, geography, and anthropology - to present a well historicised, sharply insightful analysis of football migration, mainly from West Africa, in the last two decades.' - NASSS Outstanding Book Award 2023 Judges statement

'Well-researched and meticulously written [...] Provides some much-needed oxygen to the study of African migration.'
Jesper Bjarnesen, International Migration Review

'The book makes important contributions to football migration and African youth studies literature. It pioneers an integrated approach that analyses African football migration at the macro, meso and micro levels'.
Ikechukwu Ejekwumadu, European Journal of Sport and Society
'Essential reading for those interested in the sociology, geography, management, and anthropology of sport.' Elizabeth White, H-Migration (H-Net Network on the global history of migration)

'Ultimately, this book is a must-read for anyone interested in migration, football, Africa, or the continued relationships between African states and European colonial rule and neocolonialism.'
Atticus Williams, Fordham University, African Studies Quarterly, Volume 22, Issue 2April 2024