Gains Versus Drains: Football Academies and the Export of Highly Skilled Football Labor Paul Darby Reader in Sociology of Sport University of Ulster Over the last two decades, there has been a debate of increasingly acrimo- nious proportions on the consequences of what has come to be labeled as an “exodus” of Africa’s finest football talent to Europe. This debate, played out in the game’s corridors of power, in media circles, amongst academics, between politi- cians, and in both European and African courts, has often mirrored polemicizing around highly skilled African migration more generally. The emigration of the highly skilled from the Global South and its impact on development in source 265 countries has, for many decades, vexed politicians, economists, policy makers, and academics alike. In the second half of the twentieth century, heavyweight in- tellectual paradigms rooted in neoclassical and neo-Marxist perspectives vied for primacy in the migration research and policy communities. Clearly demarcated battle lines were drawn and polemical debates ensued. Migration was painted as a zero-sum game involving either gains or drains, winners or losers, a cause for optimism or pessimism. Optimists argued that capital could be captured and gains accrued by donor nations through remittances, the (assumed) return of migrants and associated brain circulation, rising wages, and transnationally minded diasporas, all of which could function as potential engines and agents of development. Pessimists depicted skilled migration as an extractive process characterized by the hemorrhaging of valuable resources abroad, underdevelop- ment, a deepening of poverty and global inequality, and damaging sociocultural impacts in sending societies.1 Paul Darby is Reader in Sociology of Sport at the University of Ulster. His most recent book is Gaelic Games, Nationalism and the Irish Diaspora in the United States (University College Dublin Press, 2009). He is a member of the editorial board of Soccer and Society. Copyright © 2012 by the Brown Journal of World Affairs Spring/Summer 2012 • volume xviii, issue ii Paul Darby Given sub-Saharan Africa’s status as a primary exporter of skilled and ter- tiary-educated labor, it is hardly surprising that this region features prominently in debates around the costs and benefits of out-migration.2 Sustained African skilled migration began during the 1960s with the creation and expansion of access to education in newly independent nation-states. During the 1970s, the horizons of the newly educated shifted beyond national borders as a consequence of a range of social, economic, and political factors. By the 1980s, the prom- ise of higher wages and an escape from political instability and conflict drew workers from around the continent to Europe, North America, and the oil-rich nations of the Middle East. Since then, out-migration rates amongst tertiary- educated Africans to Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, particularly those in the European Union, have increased dramatically.3 While the impact of this process on the continent was, and still is, often explained via the classical opposition between migration optimists and pessimists, a whole raft of microlevel studies has produced a wealth of empiri- cal evidence that reveals the impact of out-migration on developing countries, including those in Africa, to be much more complex and heterogeneous than either of these broad macrolevel positions suggest.4 The debate on the emigration of highly skilled football labor to Europe 266 reveals similar fault lines in the public, policy, and academic discourse on Af- rican migration more generally. On one side are optimists who argue that the migration of African footballers provides the sort of exposure to elite leagues and salaries that not only contributes to the development of football, but also allows individuals to escape poverty and potentially facilitate development at home. Others vehemently disagree, painting the loss of Africa’s football resources to Europe as evidence of uneven global development and neocolonialism. This latter view was perhaps expressed most caustically by Sepp Blatter, the presi- dent of the world governing body for football, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA). In an interview with the Financial Times in 2003, he described those European clubs involved in the recruitment of African labor as “neo-colonialists” who “engage in social and economic rape by robbing the developing world of its best players.”5 Football academies, defined in the broadest terms as facilities or coaching programs designed to produce football talent predominantly for export, have received particular criticism. As demand for highly skilled but cheap football labor in Europe accelerated during the last decade and a half, so too has the presence of these facilities around the conti- nent—particularly in West Africa. Academies have been viewed in some quarters as part of an unseemly scramble for young, malleable athletes and have been the brown journal of world affairs Gains Versus Drains variously described by senior African football administrators and journalists as “farms,” “a terrible thing,” and as sites where young players are “groomed” for export, leaving domestic leagues “bereft of talent.”6 Analyses of the causes, consequences, and impact of African player migra- tion to Europe and the place of football academies in the trade have also begun to feature in the growing academic literature on sports labor migration. Although the key studies have adopted a more measured position than some of the media and policy discourse, they are generally underpinned by a pessimism that depicts the impact of the trade as problematic for African football, communities, and countries.7 This article reconsiders this position in relation to Ghana.8 More specifically, it examines the extent to which football academies and the broader football industry that has emerged around the export of Ghanaian footballers can be understood exclusively via the optimist or pessimist position or whether they elicit much more heterogeneous impacts. In order to begin to address these questions, the article briefly outlines the development and key features of Ghanaian football labor migration. GHANAIAN FOOTBALL LABOR IN THE GLOBAL MARKETPLACE While there has been a long-standing tradition of outward flows of football mi- 267 grants from Africa to Europe that stretches back to the beginning of the twentieth century, it was not until the early 1990s that sustained football labor migration from Ghana began. Enticed by the country’s success at FIFA’s Under-17 World Youth Championships in the 1990s, scouts, agents, and intermediaries acting on behalf of European teams flocked to the rich but cheap seam of highly skilled talent.9 The upshot was that by the turn of the new millennium, Ghana had become the third highest exporter of football labor on the continent, accounting for 10 percent of all Africans in the European professional game.10 Ghanaian players have continued to feature prominently in international transfers from Africa. By 2010, there were just over 350 expatriated in football leagues around the world, while each year around 40 leave local clubs on officially sanctioned international transfers.11 The majority of these players secure contracts in Europe; Germany is the primary importer followed by England.12 While some Ghanaians play in lucrative competitions in Italy, France, and Spain, a significant proportion ply their trade outside elite leagues.13 Alongside these Afro-European routes is a much more diffuse and seemingly random movement of Ghanaians to leagues in Asia, the Middle East, and elsewhere in Africa. In most cases though, migra- tion to these sorts of destinations are seen as intermediate steps on the way to Spring/Summer 2012 • volume xviii, issue ii Paul Darby one of Europe’s major leagues. The aspirations of talented young Ghanaian players to play professionally in Europe are shaped by a complex, interweaving mélange of factors. In the minds of young talents, mediated images of top-level European leagues and “star” mi- grant Ghanaian players with lucrative careers are juxtaposed with the reality that local football offers few opportunities for a professional career. “Professional” football in Ghana has been in existence since 1993, but monthly average player salaries remain low and in most cases compare unfavorably with, for example, the salary of a university graduate working in the Ghanaian civil service. Beyond It is clear that there exists amongst economics, the governance of Ghanaian football can young talented players a strong sense prove unstable, creating that their futures lie outside the country. further difficulties for local players. For example, the start of the second half of the 2010–2011 Premier League season was delayed when clubs suspended their activities in protest over a raid on the offices of the Ghanaian Football Association (GFA) by Ghana’s serious fraud unit, the Economic and Organized Crime Office, as part of an investigation into alleged financial improprieties.14 These sorts of events, combined with poor salaries 268 and working conditions, as well as broader levels of poverty in the country, do little to encourage young Ghanaian footballers to envisage a future in the local game. Instead, they provide a compelling logic to “go outside” and effectively help produce a committed and flexible workforce that hankers after employment opportunities