Making stars and making nations? Migration of football talents and the contribution of fans to national identities

The phenomenon of the migration of African football players to Europe and the contribution of Ghanaian supporters at the World Cup to a national identity are two research questions of “Footballmigration – A Dream of Europe”, a research project by Erdmute Alber, professor for Social Anthropology, and her assistant Christian Ungruhe. [...] Their project aims to qualify recent debates on the practices of the movement of young African players to Europe which portray this phenomenon merely as an exploitation of talents and thus tend to victimize them without taking their agency into account. [...]