Raffaele
Poli
University
of Lausanne and University of Neuchâtel,
Switzerland
Understanding
globalization through football: The new international division of
labour, migratory channels and transnational trade circuits
Over
the past 20 years, the problematic of globalization has become a
recurring theme in the social sciences. Today it has largely outgrown
the economic sphere where it first came into being [4]. The
multiplicity of possible approaches to globalization obliges the
researcher to have a prior clarification of the concept, in order to
avoid the risk of making it ‘a buzzword for journalists and the
latest generation of vacuous futurolo-gists’ [32].
Regarding
sport, Bale and Maguire [3] have elaborated an analytical distinction
between five different ‘scapes’ [2] of globalization, each of which
comprises the movement of a particular entity: materials for
‘technoscapes’, money for ‘financescapes’, images and information for
‘mediascapes’, ideas for ‘ideoscapes’ andpeople for ‘ethnoscapes’.
The scope of this article will focus on the exclusive development of
the thematic of the international mobility of sporting talents,
especially that of footballers. This case study is particularly
interesting for two reasons: the existence of professional
championships in a large number of countries and the importance of
the international flow of players that football generates.
The
article is structured in three parts. First, it presents three
perspectives on globalization, clarifying them using references from
researchers having worked in the domain of football player
migrations. In the second part, it examines the geography of the
international flows of footballers and it analyses the quantitative
evolution of the presence of expatriate players in the five principal
European leagues (English Premier League, Spanish Primera
Liga,
Italian Serie A, French Ligue
1,
German Erste Bundesliga) [8]. The aim is to verify if the general
increase in international flows reflects a spatial diversification of
migratory routes, or if privileged recruitment channels between the
departure and arrival areas still exist. In the third part, we
analyse the empirical functioning of transfer networks. The example
of three ideal-typical upward career paths of African players having
attained the English Premier League is used to illustrate the
functional integration of leagues beyond national borders.
From
a theoretical point of view, the article is based on relationnism.
Contrary to substantialism, which ‘takes its point of departure the
notion that it is substances of various kinds (things, beings,
essences) that constitute the fundamental units of all inquiry’, the
paradigm of relationnism promotes a view of the society which
highlights ‘the primacy of contextuality and process in sociological
analysis’ [13]. From this perspective, the purpose of the article is
to show that the general tendency of increase in the international
flow of athletes does not occur by itself, as a natural feature of
the contemporary world, but concretely depends on the actions of a
plurality of actors who, by the relations they build on a daily
basis, are responsible for the interconnection between specific zones
of departure and arrival. Generally speaking, globalization is not
seen as an outcome that actors cannot influence, but as a structural
process directly linked to human agency.
Perspectives
on globalization and relational approach of footballers’ mobility
Depending
on the manner in which globalization is envisaged, Held et
al. [19]
have classed researchers into three categories: the ‘sceptics’, the
‘hyperglobalists’ and the ‘transformationnists’. The sceptics hold
that the concept in itself is not justified insofar as it refers to a
relatively old process of internationalization linked to the
worldwide diffusion of capitalism. According to their point of view,
‘recent growth of international flows represents rising in
interactions between well-defined national economies, rather than the
emergence of global economic activity’ [32]. For Brenner,
globalization proceeds by rounds and the current phase is only ‘the
most recent historical expression of a
longue
durée dynamic
of continual deterritorialization and reterritorial-ization that has
underpinned the production of capitalist spatiality since the first
industrial revolution of the early nineteenth century’ [4]. In the
case of the migration of footballers the perspective of Lanfranchi
and Taylor [20] can be put into this category. According to Taylor,
‘football migration is nothing new, but has a long and complicated
history’ [46]. For the same author, ‘much of the writing on football
migration has tended to employ »globalization» uncritically, as if
it were an established fact rather than a contested concept’. In the
sceptics’ vision, historical continuity is preferable to a view that
emphasizes rupture, such as that held, contrarily, by the
hyperglobalist perspective.
The
hyperglobalists consider that the concept of globalization is not
only justified, but is the only proper conceptual framework with
which to analyse the contemporary world. From their perspective
‘globalization has created a single economy transcending and
integrating the world’s major economic regions’ [32]. From now on, we
live in a world where states have lost a large part of their power.
As they are no longer able to limit the international circulation of
goods, services and merchandises, states have to be content with
encouraging them by the setting up of regulatory frameworks that are
less restrictive than in the past [45]. With the development of the
NTIC and the process of the annihilation of space by time [18], the
erosion of state power is the key aspect on which hyperglobalist
researchers insist.
Applied
to football, this perspective has been amply used to account for the
juridical changes that have come about from 1995 onwards, when the
Bosman ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Community
liberalized circulation within the EU for players holding a
communitarian passport [11]. After having focused their attention on
the general increase in international flows of athletes — a hitherto
little-studied topic suddenly became worthy of scientific attention —
several researchers distanced themselves from the hyperglobalist
vision, by notably highlighting the geographical selectivity of the
flows [26, 29, 38].
The
third perspective on globalization is defined as transformationnist.
Contrary to the sceptics, the transformationnists consider that
globalization is a new process comprising a spatial interdependence
on a transnational scale that has not been seen before. A distinction
is made between internationalization and globalization. According to
Peter Dicken, while internationalizing processes involve the ‘simple
geographical spread of economic activity across national borders with
low levels of functional integration’, the globalizing ones involve
‘both extensive geographical spread and also a high degree of
functional integration’ [9]. In the case of internationalization, the
change is more quantitative in nature, while in case of globalization
it is more qualitative. The key feature of globalization is the
development of economic circuits functionally integrated beyond
national borders, to which authors usually refer by the terms of
‘global commodity chains’ [15] and ‘global production networks’ [9].
The
desire to understand the manner in which a functional integration
process intervenes within the framework of the football players’
labour market necessitates taking into account the transfer networks
of players as an analytical unit, rather than the players
individually or the macro-economic structures in which they are
integrated. As Dicken et al. have duly remarked, we think that in
order to understand the functioning of the global economy, it is
necessary ‘to transcend »atomistic description» of activities of
individual actors or meta-individual imaginations of »deep»
structures’ [10]. In the manner of Granovetter, we believe that ‘the
analysis of processes in interpersonal networks provides the most
fruitful micro-macro bridge. In one way or another, it is through
these networks that small-scale interaction becomes translated into
large-scale patterns, and that these, in turn, feed back into small
groups’ [16]. Within the paradigm of relationnism, the analysis of
interactions between actors in networks allow us to understand how
the latter ‘globalize’ the world, from the point of view of
strategies deployed to create or take advantage of opportunities, as
well as the constraints that limit or influence their actions.
In
taking into account criticisms made by numerous authors regarding the
a-spatial vision of globalization [27, 28, 44, 47], according to
which all frontiers disappear, we have built our analysis with the
help of approaches developed in the context of studies of migration
which are based on the notions of networks [30] and channels [14].
Starting from the figurational view of the society promoted by
Norbert Elias [12], networks are considered as sets of functionally
interdependent individuals. In interlinking with each other, networks
form the base of society. They are seen as dynamic social
configurations constructed by actors, that both allow and set the
boundaries of their actions. While not all individuals have the same
room for manoeuvre within networks, and do not have the same
possibilities to elaborate new ones, an initial starting position can
progress positively or negatively according to the astuteness of the
strategic choices made.
In
the case of the footballers’ transfer market, networks are made up of
a plurality actors playing distinct and complementary roles. From a
relational perspective, each flow is a concrete, empirical and
synthetic output of networks involving, among others, club officials,
managers, agents, talent scouts, investors and, last but not least,
players themselves and quite often also their relatives. These actors
collaborate to make transfers possible and compete to appropriate the
financial added value generated by the latter. As a consequence of
this reasoning, we consider that no flows occur without the
participation of multiple stakeholders who are directly or indirectly
linked each other, and whose decision-making power is greater or
lesser according to circumstances and opportunities.
While
the importance of networks and intermediaries in the mobility of
athletes is widely recognized [36, 42], the emphasis in literature on
the migrations of athletes has been placed more often on their
individual motives. From this perspective, Maguire [23] has
identified different types of athletes, grouped according to their
migration experience: ‘pioneer’ type migrants, ‘mercenaries’,
‘nomadic cosmopolitans’, ‘settlers’ and ‘returnees’. In a similar
fashion, Magee and Sugden [22] have added to the previous typology
the categories of ‘ambitionist’, ‘exile’ and ‘expelled’. As Maguire
and Elliott highlight, ‘when examining research located in the area
of athletic labor migration, it is evident that the majority of the
work has focused on the motivations and experiences of migrant
athletes’ [24]. Nevertheless, the fact remains that the focalization
on individual motives and experiences of athletes runs the risk of
atomizing the research and tends to lose sight of structural
constraints imposed on any player wishing to migrate.
Other
studies on the mobility of athletes have taken the structural
inequalities between countries as an analytical entity. Principally
carried out to account for migrations of African players in Europe,
these analyses emphasize the political mechanisms of economic and
cultural domination [6]. From a neo-Marxist perspective, Darby et al.
hold, for example, that the recruitment of footballers carried out by
European clubs in Africa ‘may clearly be interpreted as an extension
of broader neo-imperialist exploitation of the developing world by
the developed world’ [7].
The
focalization on the political stakes in migrations from a
macro-economic perspective entails the risk of forgetting the
importance of the actions of individuals who, by their competencies
and strategic choices, can influence positively the structures in
which they are embedded and of which they are not merely passive
actors. While it allows us to understand economic logics and the
underlying power games at stake in the migrations of sportsmen, the
macro-structural perspective does not furnish the analytical and
conceptual tools to understand more precisely the socio-spatial
logics at work.
Contrary
to what is usually undertaken by researchers following world-system
theory or the neo-classic approaches based on the individual rational
choice theory, network theories on migration insist on the fact that
migratory channels must be carefully traced and described ‘instead of
being left to external and elusive macro-determinations’. In a
relational framework, migration appears indeed ‘as being less the
residual factor of a confrontation between supply and demand on the
international labour market than the expression of global dynamics
generated by human interactions’ [30].
Having
recourse to a relational approach in the study of globalization gives
us the possibility to concretely understand the manner in which
actors take into account the constraints and opportunities linked to
economic, cultural and power differentials existing between
territories. In the case of the trade of footballers, such as in
other domains of economic life, the relational framework aims at
understanding how human actions are reflected spatially and organize
in the final instance the dynamics of flows.
Volume
and spatiality of international flows
The
concept of globalization is generally associated with the process of
the new international division of labour. Contrary to the pre-global
international division of labour, within which the industrialized
countries (the centre) sought from non-industrialized ones (the
periphery) raw materials and agricultural products, the new
international division of labour manifests itself by a relocalization
of part of the industrial production in certain countries of the
former periphery. This process can be defined as ‘an emergent form of
worldwide division of labour associated with the internationalization
of production and the spread of industrialization’ [31]. Controlled
from a few global cities [43], the major transnational companies no
longer look only for markets or raw materials from Southern
countries, but also for a labour force that is considered to be
‘cheap to buy, abundant, and well disciplined’ [48].
The
analytical framework of the new international division of labour is
also applicable in the context of professional football. While, in
the industrial sphere, the relocalization of production is reflected
in a strong increase of products made in countries having
progressively acquired an advantage regarding human capital and
factors of production (notably in South-East Asia), in professional
football such a process is born out of an increase of the number of
players imported from South America and Africa.
Figures
1 represent the number of expatriate players taking part in the
‘big-5’ European leagues during the seasons 1995/96 and 2005/06,
according to their country of origin. The statistical data used for
the purpose of this article have been gathered together by the
Professional Football Players Observatory (PFPO), a French-Swiss
research group co-founded by the author. The origin of players is
defined here independently from the nationalities they may have, as
the country where they grew up and from which they departed following
recruitment by a club overseas. Only flows directly linked to
football are thus taken into account. The choice of seasons for the
comparison was made with respect to legal changes regarding
international flows of players (Table 1). The 1995/96 season is
indeed the last prior to the application of the aforementioned Bosman
law.
Table
1. Evolution
of the composition of the labour market in the ‘big-5′ European
leagues according to players’ origin
|
|
Number |
Number |
% |
|
1995/96 |
2286 |
463 |
20.2% |
|
2005/06 |
2586 |
998 |
38.6% |
|
Evolution |
+ |
115% |
91% |
a
b
Figure
1. Number
of expatriate players in the ‘big-5’ European leagues according to
their country of origin: a) 1995/96 season; b) 2005/06 season
Henceforth,
in the five major European leagues, almost four footballers out of
ten have come to the country where they work following a professional
international migration. The increase in the number and the
percentage of expatriate players has continued over the last four
seasons. In 2008/09, there were 1107 expatriates in the ‘big-5’
leagues, representing 42.6 percent of the total number of footballers
[36].
From
1995 to 2005, in absolute terms, all geographical origins have
participated in the increase of expatriate footballers. However, the
relative values indicate today a higher proportion of Latin American
and African players among expatriates, to the detriment of
footballers from Western Europe, and, even more so, from Eastern
Europe (Table 2).
Table
2.
Evolution
of the proportion of expatriates according to zone of origin
|
|
Western |
Eastern |
Latin |
Africa |
Others |
Total |
|
1995/96 |
39.1% |
29.4% |
16.6% |
10.6% |
4.3% |
100% |
|
2005/06 |
35.4% |
14.8% |
28.6% |
16.2% |
5.0% |
100% |
|
Difference |
-3.7% |
-14.6% |
12.0% |
5.6% |
0.7% |
0% |
From
1995 to 2005, clubs of the best European leagues have recruited
players from Africa and Latin America even more than in the other
countries of the continent. Consequently, the proportion of
non-European expatriate players has increased in two ways, in
comparison with the global pool of players, as well as relative to
expatriate footballers. In absolute terms, while the number of
expatriates from Western and Eastern European countries has increased
from 317 to 502 (+58.3%), the number of non-Europeans has augmented
from 146 to 496 (+240%). While on the increase in all the leagues,
the proportion of the latter still changes greatly according to
country.
Regarding
international recruitment, Spanish, French and Italian clubs are
clearly more orientated towards other continents than English or
German ones (Table 3). This result is a first indication of the
spatial selectivity of the international flows of footballers. This
phenomenon can be fully understood by having recourse to the
‘migratory channels’ analytical framework [14].
Table
3.
Evolution
of the proportion of non-European players among expatriates according
to country of employment
|
|
England |
Germany |
Spain |
France |
Italy |
|
1995/96 |
16.7% |
18.3% |
42.3% |
60.3% |
41.1% |
|
2005/06 |
26.1% |
32.3% |
68.0% |
73.2% |
65.2% |
|
Difference |
9.4% |
14.0% |
25.7% |
12.9% |
24.1% |
In
the study of the migration of highly qualified personnel, different
researchers have shown the importance of networks to enhance and
organize international flows. Assuming that ‘most international
migrants depend on intermediaries to help them to achieve employment
and housing in another country’, Findlay and Li consider that the
‘intermediary agencies, by channelling information and resources,
have an influence in moulding the process of international
migration’. This forms the basis for the ‘migratory channels’
framework, so that ‘channels not only reflect the existence of a
migration system, but are also responsible for the structuring of the
system’ [14].
According
to Meyer, the emergence of persons and enterprises who play an
intermediary role in a professional capacity, ‘confirms the fact that
globalization of the highly skilled labour market does not occur
without massive network investment’ [30]. The same logic can be
applied to the migration of footballers, even though the latter, in
particular Africans, due to their early age of migration1
and a departure abroad most often without a signed work contract, can
rather be considered as ‘migrants to be qualified’ [35]. The
intersection of the geographical origin of expatriates and the
countries in which they exercise their profession confirms the
existence of privileged relations between territories (Table 4).
Table
4. Spatial
distribution of expatriate players by zone of origin according to
league (2005/06 season)
|
|
Germany |
Italy |
Spain |
France |
England |
Total |
|
Latin |
15.60% |
28.70% |
37.40% |
12.50% |
5.80% |
100 |
|
Africans |
9.00% |
11.50% |
3.40% |
57.20% |
18.90% |
100 |
|
Eastern |
42.80% |
15.50% |
8.10% |
14.10% |
19.50% |
100 |
|
Western |
18.90% |
9.20% |
12.30% |
8.50% |
51.10% |
100 |
The
strongest concentration pertains to African footballers: 57.2 percent
of footballers of this origin play for French clubs. Western European
expatriates are highly concentrated in England, while Eastern
European ones are over-represented in Germany. Finally, Latin
Americans are very present in Spain as well as in Italy, and are the
least concentrated players in a single country. They are, however,
clearly over-represented in these two Latin countries.
The
inequality of the distribution of expatriate footballers according to
their origin is confirmed by significant Chi-square tests for both
the 1995/96 and 2005/06 seasons. The intensity of the relation has
only diminished slightly in 10 years: Cramer’s V value has gone from
0.44 to 0.4. The general increase in the international flow of
players during the first 10 years after the Bosman law has thus not
been reflected in a significant spatial diversification of transfer
networks. On the contrary, it has led to a quantitative reinforcement
of older channels. The operation of the latter continues to depend on
criteria such as geographical proximity (Germany-Eastern Europe,
England-Scandinavia, Ireland and other UK nations) or historical
links (Spain-Latin America, Italy-Latin America, France-old African
colonies, England-USA and Australia). The evolution observed is not,
however, the same for all the zones of origin studied (Table 5).
Table
5. Contribution
to the Chi according to zone of the origin
|
|
Africa |
Latin |
Eastern |
Western |
Total |
|
1995/96 |
23.9% |
18.1% |
21.5% |
36.5% |
100 |
|
2005/06 |
36.3% |
30.2% |
10.2% |
23.3% |
100 |
|
Difference |
12.4% |
12.1% |
-11.3% |
-13.2% |
— |
The
evolution of the contributions to the formation of the relation
expressed by the Chi-square value according to the zone of origin of
expatriate footballers shows that, in comparison with Africans and
Latin Americans, Europeans tend towards a more homogenous
distribution between the leagues taken into account. From the point
of view of geography, the introduction of free movement for EU
players has above all resulted in a more equal spatial redistribution
in the different championships. Indeed, during the 1995/96 season,
European expatriate footballers were even more concentrated in
Germany and in England than they were 10 seasons later. On the other
hand, for non-Europeans, the growth took place in a selective manner,
from leagues where players from these origins were already
over-represented before the Bosman law was decreed. This process has
led to higher levels of concentration of Africans in France, such as
of Latin Americans in Italy and in Spain.
The
different geographies of international recruitment carried out by
European clubs in relation to their home country clearly indicate
that economic factors (differentials in riches) and legal ones (quota
systems) cannot by themselves explain the totality of dynamics at
work in the international trade of footballers. Like Maguire and
Pearton, we believe that ‘although economics play a crucial part in
determining the patterns of football migration, they are by no means
the only factor involved. Rather, a set of interdependences contour
and shape the global sports migration’ [25]. To fully understand what
is at stake, it is indispensable to analyse in detail the manner in
which places are put into relation by different types of actors
playing the role of intermediaries in the midst of transfer networks.
Transfer
networks and functional integration of spaces
Up
until now, we have studied the presence of expatriate players in
Europe from the perspective of stocks. In a context of high
professional mobility, it is also necessary to analyse the career
path of players from a longitudinal point of view. It thus becomes
possible to grasp the complexity of the underlying spatial stakes of
the trade and migrations of footballers, especially when more than
two countries are concerned.
If
we speak jointly of trade and migrations of football players, it is
because the latter, in the economic context particular to this
activity, are not just simply workers under contract with a club.
They also have to take on the status of commodities. Indeed, by their
transfer, different types of actors, from club managers to players’
agents, aim to set up value added chains. In order to achieve this,
they seek to gain profit from the economic differentials existing
between clubs and leagues by ‘buying’ or ‘placing’ a player in a club
and then transferring him for money to a team with more means at its
disposal.
In
order to clarify this idea, we present three examples of upward
career paths that have characterized African footballers playing or
having played for Premier League clubs in England. The choice of
examining only upward career paths was made so as to be fully aware
of the speculative logic (creation of value added chains) that
structures the transfer market for players. The decision to study the
career paths of African players in England is valid for two reasons.
The first is the high mobility of Africans: they change club every
2.4 seasons, whereas the average for players as a whole is 2.9 [36].
The second is that the English championship, with a turnover of 2.4
billion euro in 2007/2008, is today the richest football competition
in the world [8]. English clubs are capable of attracting a large
number of expatriate stars. During the 2008/09 season, 59.3 percent
of players in the Premier League were expatriates.
The
first example of an upward career path is that of Emmanuel Eboué.
This
player was born on 4 June 1983 in Yopougon, one of the 10 communes
that make up the Abidjan agglomeration. At a very young age he was
part of a local organization called Cooper Ecole de
Football,
named after its founder, Innocent Anzan, nicknamed ‘Cooper’ [33]. He
was discovered during a friendly match by the Académie
MimoSifcom
of Abidjan, a training centre founded in 1994 by the French trainer
Jean-Marc Guillou and the club ASEC Mimosas Abidjan. He became a
full-time member of the organization on 10 October 2001. Less than
one year later, he was transferred to KSK Beveren, in Belgium, a club
of which Jean-Marc Guillou had become a shareholder. After two and a
half seasons in Flanders and marriage to a Belgian woman, he was
recruited by Arsenal in January 2005. Thanks to the very good
relations between Arsène
Wenger,
the Arsenal manager, and Jean-Marc Guillou, Eboué
had
already been on a training camp for three weeks with Arsenal during
the summer of 2004. Emmanuel Eboué’s
career
path is particularly interesting because it reflects the existence of
a migratory channel set up by club officials. This channel linked the
Ivory Coast to England, with a stage via an intermediate country,
Belgium, where the conditions to obtain a work permit for non-EU
players are less restrictive than in England.
The
second example of an ideal type of upward trajectory is that of
Michael Essien. This midfielder was born in the neighbourhood of
Awutu Senya, in Accra, on 8 December 1982. Thanks to a scholarship
awarded for his football talents, he spent three years at Saint
Augustine’s Senior Secondary School (Cape Coast). On his return to
Accra, Micheal Essien became part of the Liberty Professionals FC
team. He was then picked for youth teams for Ghana. In 1999, he took
part in and won the under 20s African Cup of Nations. The same year
he played in the under 20s World Cup, where Ghana took third place.
Essien was spotted by recruiters from Manchester United, who invited
him to England for a training camp. However, the player was already
under contract to a French players’ agent, the former goalkeeper
Fabien Piveteau, an associate of Sly Tetteh, the president and
co-founder of Liberty Professionals FC. Manchester United suggested
to Micheal Essien that he play for the Belgian partner club of Royal
Antwerp in order to have the time to acclimatize himself to European
football and to fulfil conditions necessary to obtain a work permit
for across the Channel2.
The player refused and made his way to his agent’s house in Monaco.
Essien
took part in a first trial at Lille and a second at Bastia, a club
for which Fabien Piveteau has played from 1996 to 1998 during the
last stage of his professional career. In August 2000, Michael Essien
signed his first professional contract for the Corsican club. Three
years later, after some excellent performances, he was transferred to
Olympique Lyonnais in exchange for 11.75 million euro3.
After two years at Lyon, Essien requested and obtained a transfer to
Chelsea in London, who paid 38 million euro for him. This figure is
the highest so far that has been paid for the recruitment of an
African player. Michael Essien’s trajectory is particularly
revelatory of the role of players’ agents in the management of the
flow of footballers. Indeed, in most cases, more than the players or
the managers of clubs, it is the latter, thanks to their connections,
who contribute to the setting up of migratory channels that the
footballers end up by following (Poli, 2004a).
A
third ideal-type upward career path is that of Henri Camara, a
forward born in Dakar on 10 May 1977 to parents of Guinean origin. At
an early age, he became part of one of the two flagship clubs of the
Senegalese capital: ASC Jaraaf Dakar. In 1999, he was recruited by
Racing Club of Strasbourg via the intermediary of the trainer Claude
Leroy and the Swiss agent Nicolas Geiger. After having spent many
years as a coach in Africa, including Senegal, Claude Leroy was at
the time the sporting director of the Alsace club. Nicolas Geiger was
himself active in Africa and had tipsters in Senegal and in Cameroon.
Camara’s transfer was settled in Dakar on 7 July 1999 and the player
arrived in France on 20 July of the same year. The managers of RC
Strasbourg paid a commission fee of 1.7 million euro to the Team
Consult company based in Vevey, in Switzerland, and belonging to
Nicolas Geiger4.
On
6 September 1999, Camara was loaned to Neuchatel Xamax club, then
trained by Alain Geiger, brother of the agent. After a year and a
half in Neuchatel, Camara was transferred to Grasshoppers of Zurich,
where he stayed for six months winning the Swiss championship. In the
summer of 2001, free from all commitments following legal
proceedings5,
Henri Camara signed for CS Sedan through the intermediary of his new
and powerful agent, the Franco-Senegalese Pape Diouf, a former
journalist who later became the president of Olympique de Marseille.
After two seasons, Camara was transferred to Wolverhampton Wanderers
for a sum of around 3 million euro, via the intermediary of the
associate of Pape Diouf for the English market, the Scottish resident
of Monaco, William McKay. In 2004, the player refused to stay at
Wolverhampton Wanderers, which, in the meantime, had been relegated.
He was subsequently loaned for six months to Celtic in Glasgow, and
for an additional six months to Southampton. The following year
Wolverhampton Wanderers accepted a bid to sell the player to Wigan
Athletic for the sum of 4.6 million euro. Henri Camara moved then to
West Ham United, went back to Wigan Athletic and was loaned out again
to Stoke City. He is now under contract with Sheffield United. Aged
33, his financial worth is henceforth close to zero.
Generally
speaking, the three ideal-typical examples presented show to what
extent the migration of African footballers to Europe is carried out
through privileged relations between different types of actors (club
officials and managers, agents, players, private investors) who
interact within the framework of transfer networks. The setting up
and development of the latter is part of a logic of creation of value
added chains in which players are supposed to acquire worth through
movement. Spatially, these circuits very often involve more than two
countries. They are indeed usually constructed so as to take
advantage of the economic differentials existing between leagues.
Within the structure of the international trade of footballers, the
different spaces and clubs through which the players transit take on
complementary statuses. This allows us to propose a typology of
spaces.
The
‘platform’ space defines the first country to which the player comes
from his federation of origin (for example, France for Essien or
Belgium for Eboue). The ‘stepping stone’ space is a country from
which a players gains access to another country where the sporting
and economic levels of the championship are higher. For example,
Switzerland and France have played this role for Henri Camara. The
‘transit’ space is defined as the country where the player passes
through and leaves and where the level of competition to which he is
used to remains unchanged (no example for the trajectories cited).
The ‘relay’ space is defined as the country to which the player was
loaned before returning to the country from where he came (for
example, Scotland for Camara). The ‘destination’ space is that
hosting the wealthiest leagues and clubs of the world (England in
this case).
The
constant coming into contact of these different types of spaces
within the framework of players trade provokes a functional
integration of football leagues on a transnational level and,
according to the transformationnist point of view, justifies the
recourse to the concept of globalization.
Conclusion
It
is time to invert the research perspective showing how the analysis
of commerce and international migration of footballers serves to
better understand the process of globalization, notably by
underlining the central role that human intermediation plays in the
economic construction of competitive advantages [40] and in the
dynamics of spatial inequalities. Throughout this article we have
shown that the analytical and conceptual tools developed within the
framework of the study of globalization can also be applied to the
case of trade and migrations of footballers. It is also true that the
analysis of this specific case allows us to better understand the
mechanisms at work in the wider context of economic globalization.
The
example of football permits us in the first place to show the
critical role played by intermediaries in the formation and
development of migratory channels. This argument can also be applied
to the functioning of the global economy as a whole. While the study
of the social relations of production remains important, the example
of football demonstrates that it is just as important to examine the
‘social relations of circulation’ [37] of both men and commodities.
The necessity to adopt a biographical approach to fully understand
‘the social life of things’ has been also underlined by Appadurai,
who highlights the necessity in ‘breaking significantly with the
production-dominated Marxian view of the commodity and focusing on
its total trajectory from production, trough exchange/distribution,
to consumption’ [1]. This realization is more pertinent than ever at
an epoch where the growing fragmentation of production provokes a
very strong increase in the flow of goods and makes itself felt at
the level of the increasing amount of power held by intermediaries
[5]. The latter play a crucial role in the management of these flows
and largely determine their spatiality. The footballers’ transfer
market is a perfect case to shed light on this process.
The
example of football also shows that the creation of economic
opportunities is intrinsically linked to the characteristics of the
actors involved: their biographies, their linguistic skills, their
trust relationships, etc. Put together, these individual
characteristics largely determine the formation of migratory
channels, which in the football industry take the form of transfer
networks. As a consequence, the advantages regarding the recruitment
of players abroad cannot be seen as uniquely stemming from factors of
a ‘purely’ financial nature, such as, for example, the differences in
the means at the disposal of clubs according to the territories
concerned by the flows of players. If financial gaps matter, these
advantages are also socially constructed according to the profiles of
actors who are at the root of the setting up and development of
transfer networks.
This
realization can also be applied to the wider context of economic
action and of globalization from an economic perspective. As
underlined by Mark Granovetter with the notion of ‘social
embeddedness’ [17], within the framework of production and commerce
of goods, the social and political stakes that guide the actors’
actions are very often as important, or more so, as the stakes linked
to a ‘pure’ economic rationality, supposedly objective and equal for
all. The example of the international trade of footballers clearly
shows that the functional integration of spaces on a transnational
level is brought about firstly in a relational manner, according to
the social capital [41] that the actors involved in transfer networks
have at their disposal or are able to mobilize.
In
bringing to light the importance of human intermediation, the study
of footballers’ transfer market also allows us to highlight the fact
that globalization cannot be considered as a ‘simple’ structural
outcome, which is external to actors in networks and networks of
actors. Though actors seek to take advantage of existing economic
differentials, by their daily activities, they also contribute to
create them. Their strategic choices have indeed an impact in the
constant production or reproduction of competitive advantages. This
always occurs in a selective manner, through the mobilization of
relational resources whose spatial projection never covers the world
in a homogenous fashion.
Generally
speaking, the study of the case of football players’ transfer market
reveals the necessity, as underlined by David Ley, to ‘bring the
issue of human agency to a globalization discourse that has
frequently been satisfied with speaking of a space of networks and
flows devoid of knowledgeable human agents’ [21]. The example of the
migrations and commerce of footballers fully demonstrates the
imperative of replacing the agency of human actors and the social
embeddedness of their actions at the heart of the analysis of this
crucial process of the contemporary world. Notes
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1
The
age of the first international migration of Africans present in the
five principal European leagues during the 2008/09 season was 18.6
years of age. This average was 21.4 years of age for the group of
expatriate players as a whole [36]
2
In
order for a non-EU player to be eligible for a work permit in
England, he must have played at least three-quarters of the matches
for his national team during the two years prior to the transfer.
From 2009 onwards, if a permit is to be renewed for more than one
year, the player must also pass a test verifying his skills in
English.
3
The
figures mentioned here were sometimes made public by the clubs. They
are also taken from the sporting press and thus may not be exact.
They nevertheless give a good idea of the magnitude of the sums at
stake.
4
This
information was made public in December 2006 in the context of an
inquiry by a Strasbourg public prosecutor. Claude Leroy was the
subject of investigation for the misuse of public funds, forgery and
uttering. Nicolas Geiger had already collaborated with Claude Leroy
within the framework of the transfer of the Cameroonians Pierre
Njanka and Joseph Ndo. During the past 10 years, this Swiss agent
has transferred to Europe many Cameroonian and Senegalese players
(Thimothee Atouba, Papa Bouba Diop, Demba Toure, Albert Baning,
Kader Mangane, etc.).
5
Racing
Club of Strasbourg had at the time sought to block the transfer by
arguing that the player still belonged to them by virtue of the
signing of a ‘preference agreement’ in September 2000 valid until 30
June 2001. RC Strasbourg maintained that the pact had been
countersigned by the player on 16 May 2001, which Camara had always
denied, and demanded 12.5 million euro as ‘damage compensation’, as
was provided for by a clause in the contract, in the event of the
player signing with another club. The legal commission of the French
Nation Football League finally dismissed the case and fined the
Alsace club 15,000 euro for not having homologated contracts agreed
with the player as it is stipulated in the regulations.
