Interest in international sport migration has been burgeoning recently. This article considers the dominant theoretical models used to explore these movements and suggests that it is time to rethink some of our theoretical presumptions. Recent permutations of these theoretical models, shifting from globalization to network theoretical models, make this reconsideration of migrationrelated theories necessary. Drawing on the groundbreaking work done in the 1990s and on Rafaelle Poli's rapidly expanding body of work, it becomes apparent that a more flexible, openended theoretical model is necessary. This article reviews these theoretical models before making a suggestion of how international sport migration might be better framed for understanding how migration is structured and experienced in multiple locations around the world. Considering that migrants are bodies moving through space, it seems crucial to return migrants to spacebased models of movement thereby advocating a theoretical model that takes into account the complexly dynamic relationships between migrants, institutions, and places.
There is a growing interest in the transnational movements of sports professionals. Absent from these burgeoning discussions is the impact family plays upon any potential migrant's decision to travel. This article is an initial attempt to address the lack of attention paid to this important area. Using research conducted over the last decade, it examines the influences two Cuban families had upon individual migrants and considers the consequences of their decisions. Their circumstances are elided through the use of extended ethnographic case studies and transnational ethnographic research, in which the focus is not on Cuba per se, but on individuals' mobility between Cuba and elsewhere. These cases highlight the need for greater attention to be paid to local conditions and personal circumstances instead of relying solely on macro-scale structures for describing and explaining patterns of transnational sport migration.
This article examines activists' use of human rights as a discourse to contest the impacts of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games by drawing on a wider ethnographic project examining activism at Rio 2016. Focusing on two areas of contention, forced evictions and police brutality, the article considers the way activists framed their grievances and how mainstream international media outlets reported those grievances. While activists fighting against forced evictions explicitly used the language of rights in their activism, media accounts tended not to discuss these issues using this lexicon. Conversely, grassroots activists protesting around the issue of police brutality did not tend to frame their grievances in terms of rights, but these issues were discussed as human rights abuses in the media. This points to a dual role played by activists fighting forced evictions: while they are fighting to keep their own homes, they are also part of a wider discursive battle for the right to housing to be recognised and respected
The era of transnational sport migration (TSM) has been one of heady celebration, seemingly free movement across borders, and lucrative business. The predominant (and outmoded) models of sport migration currently ignore state controls of migration. This paper brings the state back into analyses of TSM and looks at strategies migrants have used to skirt governmental attempts to control their movements. Understanding the issues surrounding state constructions of national citizenship is essential - both for this paper but also for migrants themselves in order to manipulate these controlling mechanisms to work in their favour. After identifying classificatory themes for determining national and professional status, this paper draws on examples that highlight states' attempts to control the movements of sport professionals. Using a combination of ethnographic material gathered over the past decade along with interviews and investigative reports, this article argues that an updated theory for understanding transnational sport migration must incorporate and reflect the actual experiences, routes and roots of TSM and the multiple forces that contour these processes
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