Abstract
The global migration of athletes has been increasing in a variety of sporting contexts around the globe. Notably, the past decade has seen a nearly threefold increase in the number of international athletes coming to the United States for the purposes of participating in collegiate sport. In accordance with such growing internationalization, a body of research in the area of sport labor migration has developed. The purposes of the current study were to improve our understanding of the forces that lead athletes to the U.S. in order to participate in collegiate sport and to explicitly connect research on international collegiate athletes to the broader context of sport labor migration research. In doing so, we utilized the typologies of migrant athletes developed by Maguire (1999) and Magee and Sugden (2002) as a conceptual framework for analysis. Based on findings from qualitative interviews with international collegiate athletes, we present a revised typology including the categories of mercenary, nomadic cosmopolitan, settler, returnee, exile, and ambitionist to help understand the diversity of factors and experiences associated with the migration of athletes in the context of U.S. collegiate sport.
Recommended Citation
Love, Adam and Kim, Seungmo
(2011)
"Sport Labor Migration and Collegiate Sport in the United States: A Typology of Migrant Athletes,"
Journal of Issues in Intercollegiate Athletics: Vol. 4, Article 6.
Available at:
https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/jiia/vol4/iss1/6