African Football Players in the Mekong Region of Southeast Asia: Their Role Expectations, Risks, and Strategy for Survival

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  • 東南アジア・メコン地域におけるアフリカ人サッカー選手
  • 東南アジア・メコン地域におけるアフリカ人サッカー選手 : 役割期待・リスク・戦略
  • トウナン アジア ・ メコン チイキ ニ オケル アフリカジン サッカー センシュ : ヤクワリ キタイ ・ リスク ・ センリャク
  • ―役割期待・リスク・戦略―

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Abstract

<p>Given the increasing presence of African football players throughout the world, particularly in elite European leagues and in World Cup national teams, research on these players has been rapidly accumulating in the sociology of football. Nonetheless, much of this literature has placed the phenomenon within the framework of the economic disparity between European and African societies. As a result, the literature has often tended to adopt a critical perspective on the fate of migrant players, negatively depicting the process whereby such players are sent to European youth academies, at which they are trained but finally abandoned and at which they do not receive sufficient follow-up treatment from each club. However, this critical picture does not necessarily accord with the football landscape in Southeast Asia, where African migrant players have long played a prominent role in local leagues. Here they have been given unique images for themselves and developed a significant influence with local actors, both before and after the regional boom in the football business in the past ten years. To provide new empirical data in this field, this article explores such questions as the present context of football markets in the Mekong region, the risks these players face and how they cope with them, and what influence they might have brought to bear on local leagues. While also illustrating how these players have forged their own path in these developing markets, the article considers how their effort over the years in contributing to local leagues has prepared them for an increasingly challenging condition, as a form of unintended consequence, in inviting a greater number of rival players from Latin American and East European countries. The article argues that these matters have not been sufficiently taken into consideration in the existing literature.</p>

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