Abstract

For many young people from the Global South football labour migration to Europe fuels hopes of social mobility. However, the long-term value of an international career is uncertain. Despite the success of a few migrant role models, professional careers in Europe often go along with a number of social and economic challenges for migrants that hinder sufficient preparations for post-career life courses. In this article, we focus on retiring male West African footballers in Scandinavia and their challenges to transform accumulated physical capital into other forms of social, economic and cultural capital, such as financial resources, social relations, educational assets, language skills and rights in form of long-term residence permits or citizenship in Europe. By foregrounding the temporal and spatial dimensions of the accumulation and transformation of capital, we depict the relational character of its various forms (social, cultural and economic capital) and their changing value in the different localities of players’ origins and destinations and at different points in time. Hereby, we show how processes of capital transformation are ambivalent experiences which, nevertheless, point to problematic structures in the global football business that disadvantage migrant players and their attempts to reproduce social mobility after career ending.

摘要

对于许多来自全球南方足球队的年轻人来说，移民到欧洲为社会流动带来了希望。然而，国际职业的长期价值是不确定的。尽管少数移民榜样取得了成功，但欧洲的职业生涯往往伴随着移民面临的许多社会和经济挑战，阻碍了他们为职业生涯后的生活课程做好充分准备。在这篇文章中，我们重点关注在斯堪的纳维亚半岛退役的西非男性足球运动员，以及他们将积累的物质资本转化为其他形式的社会、经济和文化资本的挑战，例如金融资源、社会关系、教育资产、语言技能和形式上的权利。在欧洲的长期居留许可或公民身份。通过对资本积累和转化的时空维度的前景，我们描绘了其各种形式（社会、文化和经济资本）的关系特征及其在不同参与者来源地和目的地的不同地点和不同地点的价值变化。及时。在此，我们展示了资本转型过程如何是矛盾的经历，然而，它指出了全球足球业务中存在问题的结构，这些结构不利于移民球员以及他们在职业生涯结束后试图重现社会流动性。