Sports Migrants in "Central" Europe: "Rotating" Life-Histories
Author: José Hildo de Oliveira Filho, zevaya@gmail.com
Department: Sociology
University: Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic
Supervisor: Dino Numerato
Year of completion: 2022
Language of dissertation: English
Keywords:
Sports Migration
, Football
, Futsal
, Masculinities
Areas of Research:
Biography and Society
, Migration
, Local-Global Relations
Abstract
Outside of Europe’s top football leagues, migrant athletes are often subjected to short-term contracts, poor housing conditions, isolation and the ever-present risk of premature career termination due to injuries. This thesis is a multi-sited ethnography on Brazilian futsal and football migrants in Israel, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Lebanon, and Austria. This thesis is mostly based on life-history interviews with migrant futsal and football athletes, as well as backstage observations of one futsal team in the Czech Republic. Life-history interviews reveal not only how athletes use symbols in their everyday life, but also how race, gender, and class are articulated in the experiences of migrant athletes. While sports migration receives considerable media attention, this work focused on lower-division footballers and futsal players to understand how anonymous sports migrants deal with the precariousness of their profession, the contingencies of living temporarily apart from their families, athletes’ religiosities and plans for the future. The focus on both futsal and football is justified as professional athletes practice both of these sports in their childhood and adolescence, and, at around the age of 16, athletes specialize in one or another sport. In this sense, this thesis is an attempt to understand the specificity of both futsal and football migration through their diverse routes, and working conditions, since the hypervisibility of football obscures the relationship between Brazilian identity and futsal. The role that borders and emotions play in the lives of sports migrants are also analyzed. This thesis examines how athletes manage injuries and pain to understand the precarious careers of sports migrants.
