Women, Soccer And Transnational Migration: Annotated Bibliography

Book Review by B. Nalani Butler ([e-mail]), University of Tampa

Review of: Agergaard, S., & Tiesler, N. C. (Eds.). (2014). Women, soccer and transnational migration. Routledge. Women, Soccer, and Transnational Migration is the first of its kind and its publication could not be more timely. This work discusses multi-cultural research guided by a rich variety of perspectives on sport labor migration. The book’s greatest contribution is its gendered analysis of the various aspects of sport labor migration from around the world. Women and men’s scholarly contributions to this work, from variety of disciplines (sport studies, anthropology, and sociology) also helped to provide rich content and thoughtful experiential and theoretical frames.

The two editors of this book, Agergaard and Tiesler, have been two of the leading scholars in sport labor migration research as it pertains to women’s soccer. Agergaard, a social anthropologist and Tiesler, a sociologist and migration scholar, bring a gendered perspective to the intricacies of gender roles and athletic migration. Within the area of Sport Studies, it is important that the participation and experiences of women as sport labor migrants be theorized and examined empirically and conceptually as central to the study of sport labor migration. This is because sport labor migration is a reflection of dynamics within our broad social sphere and a microcosm for understanding how politics, economics, and culture are intertwined (Maguire & Stead, 1998). This recognition and addition within scholarly research and literature allows for an understanding of sport labor migrants that includes not just men, but both men and women i.e., a gendered analysis. According to Maguire and Bale (2013), “sport labour migration is not, then, a uniform experience. It has its own political economy” (p. 77). Therefore, only understanding the experiences of men as sport labor migrants might leave many with a skewed perspective on the sport labor migrant experience, because of the scarcity in scholarly research on women as sport labor

As a sport studies scholar who has focused on researching the experiences of both women and men in relation to sport labor migration practices, I found this text to be very helpful. Prior to the publication of this book it was difficult to find research and/or information on women athletes as international sport labor migrants. In the past women’s sport labor migration has received limited scholarly attention. The majority of data on sport labor migration, including existing typologies, is based on the experiences of men athletes. In addition, the research and information on women and international migration is also sparse and the majority of information that can be found has limited data on women migrants as highly skilled and visible