Reimagining Sports: African Athletes, Defection, and Ambiguous Citizenship

This paper interrogates citizenship in the context of the ease and fluidity with which talented African athletes from the global South are defecting to the North and the Gulf states and switching nationalities; in particular, how the pull of capital and globalization are impinging on traditional notions of citizenship. It postulates that the inevitability and irresistibility of petrodollars in the postmodern world are rendering the notion of nationalism diffuse and leading to differentiated forms of citizenship. Sporting competitions today present spaces for the articulation of nationalism and the construction of identities, whether national or individual, in new ways. With the heavy injection of capital and consumerism into sports, ideals of sports for the sake of sports as well as individual and even national identities are not only in a state of flux, but also in crisis. The essay concludes by assessing some realistic and pragmatic responses to these issues.