News Release
Probing Africa's Soccer 'Brawn Drain'
The sporting impact of Africa’s soccer 'brawn drain' - in which wealthy European teams recruit the continent’s top talent – is the focus of a new labour migration research project at the University of Ulster.
The project will be carried out by Dr Paul Darby, a researcher at the University of Ulster’s Sport and Exercise Sciences Research Institute, and will be funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC.).
Sepp Blatter, president of world football's governing body FIFA, recently described this practice as ‘unhealthy, if not despicable’ while in 1999 a report by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights warned that there was a danger of creating a ‘slave trade’ in young African footballers.
The study will analyse the role of ‘academies’ in the recruitment of football labour from Ghana by European clubs and the extraction of baseball talent from the Dominican Republic by Major League Baseball (MLB) franchises in the United States.
“The research builds on previous work that I have carried out which argues that football labour migration from Africa to Europe, serves to underdevelop domestic sporting infrastructures there and that the processes involved mirror broader forms of neo-colonial exploitation,” Dr Darby said.
While the presence of African players in Europe is believed by many to help in the development of the African game, the scramble by European clubs to locate and sign the next Michael Essien, Didier Drogba or Kolo Toure has been heavily criticised.
Dr Darby’s study involves collaboration with Professor Alan Klein from Northeastern University in Boston who has spent much of a distinguished research career in anthropology examining the transit of Dominican baseball talent to the US, predominantly via a firmly entrenched academy system.
“It is anticipated that the findings of the project will inform on-going debates within soccer’s world governing body FIFA and MLB on the governance and regulation of sports academies in underdeveloped parts of the world,” Dr Darby said.
Dr Darby is set to undertake three periods of ethnographic fieldwork in Ghana and one in the Dominican Republic as well as research trips to the headquarters of FIFA in Zurich and the Confédération Africaine de Football in Cairo.
The project commences in January with the first leg of the field work coinciding with Ghana’s hosting of the African Cup of Nations.
Dr Darby will also be discussing aspects of his work on a BBC Radio 4 production on Africa’s player exodus on 13 January.
For further information, please contact:
David Young
Telephone: 028 90366074
Email: David Young
