Humming the Opponent's Anthem: Sporting Citizenships of Convenience and the Nuances of Nationality at the FIFA World Cup
Open Access
- Author:
- Bigalke, Zach
- Graduate Program:
- Kinesiology
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- January 29, 2024
- Committee Members:
- Jonathan Dingwell, Professor in Charge/Director of Graduate Studies
Mark Dyreson, Major Field Member
Jaime Schultz, Chair & Dissertation Advisor
Michelle Sikes, Major Field Member
Francisco Javier Lopez Frias, Major Field Member
Jacob Lee, Outside Unit, Field & Minor Member - Keywords:
- soccer
football
FIFA
nationality
national identity
World Cup - Abstract:
- In this study I conceptualize “sporting citizenships of convenience” as a theoretical framework for understanding the instrumental decisions that elite footballers make when choosing which national team to play for in World Cup competition. These athletes’ decisions are contingent upon both national citizenship laws and the policies of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), which governs World Cup eligibility. Adapting the concept of citizens of convenience from the work of Indigenous anthropologist Audra Simpson and applying a mixed-methods approach that draws on prosopography and media analysis, I argue that footballers’ instrumental decisions transform these multinational athletes into sporting citizenships of convenience—and that such athletes grapple with forms of liminality and alienation because of their decision. Prosopography allows me to create an aggregate global picture of World Cup athletes’ varied relationships to national identity, while I use media analyses of multinational athletes from the Americas to narrow in on three case studies that highlight themes of colonization, immigration, enslavement, and diaspora formation that shape the various experiences of sporting citizens of convenience in different ways. Consequently, I build on and complicate recent studies on the “foreignness” of multinational footballers in World Cup competition to show how multinational athletes experience alienation and liminality even when they choose to play for a foreign team or their native land.