Joost Jansen
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Joost Jansen Joost Jansen WHO REPRESENT CAN Joost Jansen THE NATION MIGRATION, CITIZENSHIP AND NATIONHOOD ? ? IN THE OLYMPIC GAMES ? Who Can Represent the Nation? Migration, citizenship, and nationhood in the Olympic Games Joost Jansen Who Can Represent the Nation? Migration, citizenship, and nationhood in the Olympic Games Wie kan de natie vertegenwoordigen? Migratie, burgerschap en nationale identiteit in de Olympische Spelen Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam op gezag van de rector magnificus Prof.dr. R.C.M.E. Engels en volgens het besluit van het College voor Promoties. This dissertation is part of the research project Sport and Nation, financed by Erasmus University Rotterdam via a Research Excellence Initiative (REI) grant. De openbare verdediging zal plaatsvinden op ISBN: 978-94-6375-900-7 donderdag 18 juni 2020 om 11.30 uur Cover photo: Fotopersbureau Cor Vos Cover design: E.A.J. Jansen Layout and design: Stijn Eikenaar | persoonlijkproefschrift.nl door Printing: Ridderprint | www.ridderprint.nl Joost Jansen geboren te Capelle aan den IJssel © Joost Jansen All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieved system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission in writing from the proprietor(s). Doctoral committee Promotores: Prof.dr. G.B.M. Engbersen Prof.dr. G. Oonk Other members: Prof.dr. E.A. van Zoonen Prof.dr. M.P. Vink Dr. J.C. van Sterkenburg To my parents Contents Chapter 1 Setting the field 8 Chapter 2 Have the Olympic Games become more migratory? 36 Chapter 3 Towards the marketisation of citizenship? 58 Chapter 4 Controversy over citizenship and nationhood 78 Chapter 5 Who can represent the nation? 98 Chapter 6 Conclusions and discussion 118 References 130 Dutch summary 142 Acknowledgements 148 About the author 150 Curriculum Vitae 152 SETTING THE FIELD An adapted version of this chapter, co- authored by Gijs van Campenhout, will be published (forthcoming, 2020) as: Foreign-born sportspeople in the Olympics and the Football World Cup: Migration, Citizenship, and Nationhood. In: Elizabeth C.J. (ed.) Research Handbook on Sports and Society. Cheltenham: 1Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd. ? Chapter 1 Setting the field 1 Setting the field Jan Bloemen (a Dutch-born speed skater who switched to compete for Canada, for which he won a gold medal in the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Games). These examples Introduction all share the following commonality: they concern athletes whose countries of birth are not the countries they compete for, and while they have formal citizenship of those This dissertation forms an inquiry into the enduring relevance of Eric Hobsbawm’s respective countries, somehow their national belonging has been deemed ambiguous observation that ‘sportsmen [sic] representing their nation or state’ in international or is called into question. sporting competitions are ‘primary expressions of their imagined communities’ The Sport and Nation research project, which was started in September 2016, (1992: 143). More specifically, this study is about the implications of his claim that ‘the sets out to study debates about the status of athletes with migration backgrounds 1 imagined community of millions seems more real as a team of eleven named people’ competing in mass-mediated international sporting competitions in relation to issues (ibid.), especially in times when the hyphen between the nation and state is in crisis of citizenship and nationhood. The broader research project, of which this dissertation (Antonisch, 2009; Appadurai, 1996) and, according to some political readings, nation- is a product, was pre-divided into two sub-projects: one about football World Cups states are under attack (Baudet, 2012). However, as we will see, against the backdrop of and one about the Olympic Games. While some scholarly attention had been devoted global de- or reterritorialisation (Appadurai, 1996; Edensor, 2002), growing population to these debates before this project was started (e.g. Adjaye, 2010; Holmes and Storey, mobility and diversity, and, at least in certain European and North-American countries, 2011; Maguire and Falcous, 2011; Poli, 2007; Shachar, 2011; Spiro, 2014), it was our increased levels of immigration (Czaika and De Haas, 2014), nations and nationalism contention as a research group that further, more systematic empirical inquiry was have turned out to be far from ‘waning forces’ (Edensor, 2002: 28; Skey, 2011). required for two main reasons. In the build-up to the London 2012 Olympic Games, Martin Samuel (a Daily First, however needed and insightful they are, prior studies on or touching Mail sports columnist) instigated the so-called ‘Plastic Brits’ debate, where 61 foreign- upon this topic are often based on anecdotal evidence or analyses of a limited number born athletes who represented Great Britain at the London 2012 Olympic Games of mediagenic cases. In the Sport and Nation project we believe that research on were subject to ongoing scrutiny and critique (Poulton and Maguire, 2012; Chapter athletes with migration backgrounds in international sporting competitions – which 5). Two years later, in 2014, fans of the Spanish national football team chanted ‘No at present sometimes risks to neglect taking into account the larger socio-historic eres español!’ at Diego Costa (Jenson, 2016), who had just transferred his sporting developments in which empirical events or trends in sports are embedded – would allegiance from Brazil to Spain. In these two examples it was ultimately a question of benefit from a more comparative historical analysis in order to contextualise and nationhood, that is, a question of who belongs to and can represent one’s nation, that better understand such issues. so strongly resounded in both the use of the pejorative ‘Plastic Brits’ moniker and the Second, related studies have always been, rightfully, embedded within wider supporters’ chants. Such criticism of the inclusion of athletes in the British Olympic academic debates about migration, citizenship, or national belonging. However, within team and the Spanish national football team was and continues to be emblematic the broader research project we contend that it is also critical to develop a perspective of a broader shared discomfort surrounding mass-mediated international sporting that draws linkages between the three domains, since, of course, the ‘growing competitions that are organised around the principle of nationality, most notably international mobility of people questions the basis for belonging to the nation- the Olympic Games but also football World Cups, regarding ‘foreign’ athletes who state’ (Castles and Davidson, 2000: vii; also see Bloemraad, 2000). In the context of compete for countries other than their ‘own’, some even under multiple flags. international sporting competitions such as the Olympic Games, where the eligibility More recent examples of controversy but also uneasiness over foreign-born rules as formulated by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) primarily rely on athletes, many with dual nationalities and overlapping identities, are numerous and citizenship (Iorwerth, Hardman and Jones, 2014), the allegedly growing presence of diverse. They include, for example, Mathieu van der Poel (a Belgian-born cyclist who foreign-born athletes is inextricably linked with the attribution of legal membership rides for the Netherlands), Jofra Archer (a Barbadian-born English cricketer), the in different nation-states and changes therein.1 Although these athletes born abroad many players with African roots who won the 2018 FIFA World Cup with the French all have formal citizenship of the countries they compete for, their presence also seems national football team, the Dutch-born football players of Moroccan descent forced to choose between representing the Netherlands or Morocco internationally, and Ted- 1 Citizenship is defined here as legal status, i.e. how modern states formally define their citizenry (see Brubaker, 1992) 12 13 Chapter 1 Setting the field to challenge existing discourses of nationhood, in particular ideas of who belongs to An additional feature that makes the Olympics a particularly interesting which nation and on what grounds. research setting for the purposes of examining issues of migration, citizenship, and These are the lacunae that I aim to address in this dissertation. The central nationhood, is the fact that under Rule 41 of the Olympic Charter athletes are, under research question that guides this study is: How has the number of foreign-born athletes certain conditions, allowed to switch their sporting nationality. In football World Cups, in the Olympic Games changed, and how do these numbers challenge notions of citizenship for instance, FIFA’s eligibility rules impede players from switching their nationality and nationhood? Although I have referred to examples from a range of different sports after one’s first appearance in an official match (IOC, 2019; Van Campenhout, Van and sporting competitions in this introduction, it should be noted that the scope of Sterkenburg and Oonk, 2018). In light of this, the attribution of citizenship (as a legal this dissertation is limited to the Olympic Games. The primary, more pragmatic reason status), and more specifically the having of multiple citizenship or acquiring of a new 1 for centring this research on the Olympic Games is the broader research project’s