Women, Soccer and Transnational Migration

Estimated participation figures of almost 30 million worldwide make soccer the most prominent team sport amongst girls and women. However, making a living as a female player is only deemed possible in approximately 20 out of around 150 FIFA-listed women’s soccer countries. This has led to a situation where highly skilled sports women have to migrate from their homelands to find employment with a professional team. Women, Soccer and Transnational Migration represents a substantial contribution to our knowledge on the development of women’s soccer, to research into sports labor migration and sport and globalization more broadly. The book consists of three parts. Firstly, it provides an overview and an analysis of migration in women's soccer from its earliest forms until now. It then presents several case studies, delivered by scholars from around the world, illustrating how female players are increasingly being drawn to the USA, Northern Europe and Scandinavia due to their ability to support professional leagues. Finally, all the themes and patterns of these case studies are drawn together to be able to compare and contrast migration in women's soccer to sport migration and globalization more broadly. This study not only makes recommendations for future researchers, but may also serve as an important source of information for those in charge of policy. As such, it is essential reading for students, lecturers, researchers and practitioners involved in sports migration and women's sport.

Part I - Globalization, Migration and Women’s Soccer: state of the art, history and current patterns Chapter 1. Introduction. Globalization, Sports Labor Migration and Women’s Mobilities - Agergaard & Tielser Chapter 2. ‘Soccer Matters Very Much, Every Day’: Player Migration and Motivation in Professional Women’s Soccer - Williams Chapter 3. Current fluxes in women’s soccer migration. Towards understanding the circularity of athletic mobility and skills-exchange - Agergaard & Tielser Part II - Women’s soccer across the globe: case studies of migratory flows and experiences Chapter 4. The Continental Drift to a Zone of Prestige. Women’s Soccer Migration to the U.S. NCAA Division One 2000 – 2010 - Booth & Liston Chapter 5. Student Athletic Migration from Trinidad and Tobago: The Case of Women’s Soccer - McCree Chapter 6. New Frontiers: The Transnational Circulation of Brazil’s Women Soccer Players - Rial Chapter 7. International Migration of Japanese Women in World Soccer - Yoshio Chapter 8. Leaving the Core? The Emigration of Scandinavian Women Soccer Players - Botelho & Skogvang Chapter 9. Momentous spark or enduring enthusiasm? The 2011 FIFA Women’s World Cup and its impact on players’ mobility and on the popularity of women’s soccer in Germany - Pfister, Klein og Tiesler Part III - Developing transnational perspectives on sports migration: A conceptual framework Chapter 10. On Mobility and Visibility in Women’s Soccer: theorizing an alternative approach to sport migration - Carter Chapter 11. Bringing Gender into Sports Labor Migration Research: Gendered Geographies of Power in African women’s soccer migration - Haugaa Engh Chapter 12. The typology of athletic migrants revisited. Transnational settlers, sojourners and mobiles - Agergaard, Botelho & Tiesler

Sine Agergaard is a social anthropologist and an associate professor at Aarhus University, Denmark. Her research on migration issues within sports has been published in a number of articles and books. She is currently the head of a Nordic collaborative research project studying the case of women’s soccer migration. Nina Clara Tiesler is a sociologist and a religious studies and migration scholar. She is a senior lecturer at Leibniz University of Hannover, Germany, and is an associated research fellow at the University of Lisbon, Portugal. She coordinated the international study Diasbola and held the Joao Havelange Grant in 2012–13.