Escape to victory: Development, youth entrepreneurship and the migration of Ghanaian footballers

Esson, James

doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2015.06.005

Cited by 42 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 58 publications

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“…which, in turn, cultivates the dreams of thousands of young West Africans to migrate to Europe and become professional footballers (Esson 2015a;Ungruhe and Büdel 2016;van der Meij and Darby 2014).…”

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confidence: 98%

A Social Negotiation of Hope: Male West African Youth, ‘Waithood’ and the Pursuit of Social Becoming Through Football

Ungruhe¹

2017

Boyhood Studies

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This article examines the present-day perception among boys and young men in West Africa that migration through football offers a way of achieving social standing and improving their life chances. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among footballers in urban southern Ghana between 2010 and 2016, we argue that young people's efforts to make it abroad and "become a somebody" through football is not merely an individual fantasy; it is rather a social negotiation of hope to overcome widespread social immobility in the region. It is this collective practice among a large cohort of young males-realistic or not-which qualifies conceptualizations of youth transitions such as waithood that dominate academic understanding of African youth today.

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confidence: 98%

A Social Negotiation of Hope: Male West African Youth, ‘Waithood’ and the Pursuit of Social Becoming Through Football

Ungruhe¹

2017

Boyhood Studies

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“…At one point this could be attributed to the pronounced dearth of human trafficking studies by geographers (Laurie, Richardson, Poudel, & Townsend, ; Smith, ), but disciplinary interest is growing, with studies on border practices and management (Choi, ; FitzGerald, ; Laurie, Richardson, Poudel & Townsend, ), children's agency (Beazley, ; Blazek & Esson, ; Boyden & Howard, ), perceptions of human trafficking, anti‐trafficking policies and institutional praxis (Mendel & Sharapov, ; Yea, , , b), trafficking practices and experiences (Choi, ; Esson, ; Laurie, Richardson, Poudel, Samuha & Townsend, ; Laurie, Richardson, Poudel & Townsend, ; Yea, ), socio‐legal aspects (Strauss, ) and confluences between human trafficking and precarious labour (Lewis et al., ; McGrath, ; Strauss & McGrath, ) and sex work (van Blerk, ). However, arguably, what is missing is a sustained effort to conceptualise human trafficking as a geographical phenomenon and develop a relationally‐spatial perspective.…”

Section: Adding “Space” To the Relational Critique Of Human Traffickingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Relational geographies of human trafficking: Inequality, manoeuvring and im/mobility across space and time

Blažek

Smith

2018

Trans Inst British Geog

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This paper demonstrates why and how a fuller geographical perspective extends contemporary scholarship on human trafficking within and beyond the discipline.We employ a relational approach and draw on in-depth qualitative research with trafficked persons and a range of stakeholders in Slovakia and the United Kingdom (UK), to depict how the processes underpinning human trafficking are nonlinear and operate instantaneously at multiple intersecting scales and temporalities and through diverse mobilities. The analysis problematises the discrete and homogeneous notion of space coupled with a linear conceptualisation of time and, more specifically, the normative portrayals of recruitment, transit and exploitation as distinct and sequential phases of human trafficking. Instead, the individuated experiences of trafficked persons are examined in relational geographies of inequality, manoeuvring and mobilities. Such a conceptual shift ensures that efforts to understand and combat human trafficking address its effects as well as the wider social relations and structural conditions that facilitate exploitation. We conclude the paper by outlining how a relational-geographic perspective has the potential to foster new forms of dialogue and inquiry within and beyond the discipline. K E Y W O R D SEastern Europe, exploitation, human trafficking, inequality, mobilities, relational geographies 1 | INTRODUCTION Human trafficking is inherently spatial, comprising cross-cutting processes of exploitation within and across local, regional, national and international borders. Yet, academic, policy and media understandings of human trafficking tend to rely on a discrete and homogeneous conceptualisation of space coupled with a linear conceptualisation of time (Smith, 2017). Our aim in this paper is to contribute to critical debates over structural inequalities that underpin human trafficking (Anderson & Ruhs, 2010;Andrijasevic, 2010;Lewis et al., 2015;Piper et al., 2015) by offering a geographical conceptualisation of human trafficking that explicitly recognises the relational nature of space and time. Using in-depth qualitative research with trafficked persons and a range of stakeholders in Slovakia and the United Kingdom (UK), we examine why viewing processes such as recruitment, transit and exploitation as distinct and sequential phases of the human trafficking process is reductive. In turn, we reframe human trafficking as a relational composition that spans multiple spaces and temporalities.The paper is structured as follows. First, we outline relational perspectives on human trafficking within critical inter-disciplinary scholarship and suggest that this could be enriched by engaging explicitly with relational conceptions of space (and time). Second, we introduce the writings of Massey, Bergson and Deleuze and present the theoretical framework for ---

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“…Campana, 2016). Esson's (2015aEsson's ( , 2015bEsson's ( , 2015c original research on sport trafficking from Africa to Europe, via multiple points of transit, is important here for exemplifying the need for a more holistic spatial perspective of trafficking. It is also vital for population geography to more fully disentangle the unrelated and inter-connected forms, processes and geographies of trafficking, such as the differentials and overlaps between sex trafficking and domestic servitude, and so on.…”

Section: Progressing Knowledge Of Traffickingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Population geography I

Smith

2017

Progress in Human Geography

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This first report explores how understandings of human trafficking have progressed within population geography. Exemplified by studies of exploitative labour migration, population geography has made implicit contributions by stressing the value of a geographic perspective of the webs of inter-connections and links between different places and trafficking. In addition, dominant ideas of linear trafficking processes have been disrupted, via evidencing the informal involvement of families in the phases of recruitment, transportation, and control. I argue that a more encompassing, inter-disciplinary tenet could be woven into population studies of trafficking, by more explicitly engaging with social science debates. Embedding the legal, global definition of trafficking into wider studies of migration is paramount for this direction of travel. There is also merit in population geography advancing understandings by adopting holistic lenses of enquiry, connecting-up with (sub-)disciplinary geographic studies of migration and trafficking in the Global South and Global North. Studies of trafficking provide a potentially fruitful terrain for population geography to deliver multi-disciplinary, impactful research of a key global challenge, to inform policies to prevent and mitigate the ills of trafficking, and progress conceptual and theoretical understandings of trafficking. KeywordsHuman trafficking, migration, population change, labour, exploitation I IntroductionMigration studies have been intensified within human geography by the so-called 'migration crisis ' (Davies and Isakjee, 2015;Collyer, 2016;Raghuram, 2016), sparking countless recent discussions of smuggling, asylum-seeking, refugees, and precarious and insecure movements; as international migration per se is firmly thrust into international political, policy, media and academic spotlights (Smith et al., 2015). Yet, there continues to be a relative dearth of studies of human trafficking in geographic scholarship, despite this unprecedented attention to conceptually-overlapping forms of migration (O'Connell Davidson, 2010;. This is particularly surprising within the context of population geography, given the ascendency of migration studies within the sub-discipline and trafficking being a form of migration that is in the limelight.First, trafficking is symbolic of wider contemporary global trends of the marketization and growth of migration industries within the 'age of migration ' (King, 2012). Processes of trafficking, for instance, are expressive of King's (2002: 95) assertion that: 'Migration has become a new global business with a constantly shifting set of agents, mechanisms, routes, prices and niches'. Indeed, King uses the example of trafficking to illustrate how market concepts have more fully penetrated into migration processes, describing the growth of a 'Migration PLC' and the proliferation of traffickers, agents, intermediaries, and monetary frameworks for places of origin, routes/transits and destination. In this way, more research on traffi...

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Escape to victory: Development, youth entrepreneurship and the migration of Ghanaian footballers

Cited by 42 publications

References 58 publications

A Social Negotiation of Hope: Male West African Youth, ‘Waithood’ and the Pursuit of Social Becoming Through Football

A Social Negotiation of Hope: Male West African Youth, ‘Waithood’ and the Pursuit of Social Becoming Through Football

Relational geographies of human trafficking: Inequality, manoeuvring and im/mobility across space and time

Population geography I

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