Nationality swapping in the Olympic Games 1978–2017: A supervised machine learning approach to analysing discourses of citizenship and nationhood

Abstract

While the practice of nationality swapping in sports traces back as far as the Ancient Olympics, it seems to have increased over the past decades. Cases of Olympic athletes who switched their national allegiances are often surrounded with controversy. Two strands of thought could help explain this controversy. First, these cases are believed to be indicative of the marketisation of citizenship. Second, these cases challenge established discourses of national identity as the question 'who may represent the nation?' becomes contested. Using state-of-the-art machine learning techniques, I analysed 1534 English language newspaper articles about Olympic athletes who changed their nationalities . The results indicate: (i) that switching national allegiance has not necessarily become more controversial; (ii) that most media reports do not frame nationality switching in economic terms; and (iii) that nationality swapping often occurs fairly unnoticed. I therefore conclude that a marketisation of citizenship is less apparent in nationality switching than some claim. Moreover, nationality switches are often mentioned rather casually, indicating the generally banal character of nationalism. Only under certain conditions does 'hot' nationalism spark the issue of nationhood.

Media representations of naturalized athletes: Sentiment variations and trends in Turkish media

“…Their findings showed that the “plastic Brits” debate in the media has criticized, scrutinized, and marginalized these athletes. Jansen (2019) analyzed the English-speaking media’s opinions toward nationality transfers in sports using machine-learning techniques on 1534 news articles from 1978 up to 2017, where he analyzed discourses of citizenship and nationhood within the frames of conflict, economy, and morality. Shin et al’s (2022) study focused on the media discourses of naturalized athletes in the South Korean national ice hockey team.…”

“…Significantly, however, when this representation is perceived to be conveyed by "outsiders" (Elias and Scotson, 1994;Jansen and Skey, 2020;Poulton and Maguire, 2012), some degree of discontent may arise. The absence of a "genuine" link (Jansen, 2019;Shachar, 2011) between the athlete and the State can make the representation controversial, sparking debates both nationally and internationally. Not only in sport studies, naturalized athletes have also captured the attention of various research areas such as citizenship (Jansen et al, 2018;Oonk, 2020Oonk, , 2021Reiche and Tinaz, 2019), law and migration (Shachar, 2011;Shachar and Hirschl, 2013;van Campenhout et al, 2019;Wollmann et al, 2015), and media studies and sociology (Chiba et al, 2001;Chiu, 2021;Jansen, 2019;Jansen and Skey, 2020;Shin et al, 2022;Shor and Yonay, 2010;Yung et al, 2021).…”

“…Significantly, however, when this representation is perceived to be conveyed by “outsiders” (Elias and Scotson, 1994; Jansen and Skey, 2020; Poulton and Maguire, 2012), some degree of discontent may arise. The absence of a “genuine” link (Jansen, 2019; Shachar, 2011) between the athlete and the State can make the representation controversial, sparking debates both nationally and internationally. Not only in sport studies, naturalized athletes have also captured the attention of various research areas such as citizenship (Jansen et al, 2018; Oonk, 2020, 2021; Reiche and Tinaz, 2019), law and migration (Shachar, 2011; Shachar and Hirschl, 2013; van Campenhout et al, 2019; Wollmann et al, 2015), and media studies and sociology (Chiba et al, 2001; Chiu, 2021; Jansen, 2019; Jansen and Skey, 2020; Shin et al, 2022; Shor and Yonay, 2010; Yung et al, 2021).…”

Sport and nationality: towards thick and thin forms of citizenship

“…However, in this case, Russia and not the IOC decided the citizenship issue (Schwarz, 2008;Shachar, 2011Shachar, , pp. 2090Shachar, -2091Jansen, 2019).…”

What should I wear? The choice of the nationality of migrant medalists in athletics in Tokyo 2020

“…Despite being a competition between athletes and not countries, as the Olympic Charter 1 preaches, there is no denying the character of national representation involved in a dispute such as the Olympic Games. The relationship between competition and the National States has existed since the first Olympic editions of the Modern Era and has already been the subject of study in several works [2][3][4][5] .…”