‘It’s a long way to the Super League’: The experiences of Australasian professional rugby league migrants in the United Kingdom

Abstract

This article investigates the embodied experiences of a group of professional sports labour migrants whose experiences have largely been ignored by sociological literature: southern hemisphere rugby players playing professional rugby league in the United Kingdom. The migrant pathway from Australasia to the UK is well established. Moreover, rugby league is a sport in which debate concerning the merits of employing labour migrants from Australasia is prevalent and ongoing. The study used interview and questionnaire data to investigate the embodied experiences facing this group of migrant professionals. Migrant experiences prior to migrating were contoured by access to resources and by the formal and informal relationships developed through professional and personal careers. The embodied and complex nature of contractual negotiations is highlighted. The centrality of embodied migrant identity and habitus is noted in relation to acculturation strategies adopted over time and space, both prior to and during a foreign sojourn, in terms of established and outsider groups. The paper also highlights how subgroups within a more general group of labour migrants can emerge. Furthermore, the complex influence of personal and professional relationships was found to be both enabling and constraining. These differences between subgroups are considered in light of previous work on acculturation strategies and the existential nature of migration. Future research requirements in the sports labour migration field are suggested.

Keywords

embodied experiences figurations globalization labour migration rugby league

Introduction

People have long travelled between Australasia and Europe. This journey is rooted in longer term processes of globalization (Maguire, 2002). For some the journey represents a ritual on the journey to maturity or experience of an inherited past (O’Donoghue, 2009). Moreover, sport is one industry in which travelling to Europe, and particularly the United Kingdom (UK), from Australasia has become established. Similarities in language and culture and personal contacts can make the UK the ideal destination for cricket players, association football players and rugby players (Collins, 2000; Hadfield, 1992; Lemmon, 1987; Stead and Maguire, 1998). However, for sports migrants with indigenous Australasian backgrounds, European culture can be unfamiliar and dislocation from ‘home’ a possibility. Despite this, a tradition of migrating to Europe in sports such as rugby exists for Maoris, Papuans, Aborigines and ‘Pacific Islanders’, including Melanesians, Micronesians and Polynesians (Grainger, 2006).

Sport labour migration has been framed against theories of globalization (Maguire, 2000, 2002). Debates focus on different theoretical approaches to understanding the concept of globalization (Bale and Maguire, 1994; Carter, 2011; Maguire, 2002; Poli, 2010; Weedon, 2012). For example, Poli (2011) defines three key approaches to understanding globalization, including ‘sceptics’ who question the distinctiveness of global flows from previous established trade links, the hyperglobalist position which emphasizes a single global economy that transcends previous territorial limitations and has eroded the power of the state, and the transformationalist approach, in which spatial interdependence through global flows of cultural, or qualitative, transfers down ‘global commodity chains’ and global production networks is emphasized and contrasted with quantitative flows conceptualized as internationalization processes (Dicken, 2007; Poli, 2010).

Research that focuses upon the migration of sportspeople as a symptom of globalizing processes has examined the intensity and directionality of flows of athletic talent migration down networks, or ‘talent pipelines’ (Maguire and Stead, 1998). Figurational studies have examined the interweaving of cultural, political, historical, geographical and temporal factors in promoting, maintaining and contouring labour migration patterns (Bale and Maguire, 1994; Elliott and Harris, 2011; Elliott and Maguire, 2008; Elliott and Weedon, 2011; Falcous and Maguire, 2005b; Maguire, 2000; Maguire and Falcous, 2011; Maguire and Pearton, 2000; Maguire and Possamai, 2005; Maguire and Stead, 1996, 1998; Stead and Maguire, 1998). It has also been demonstrated that many sports have a unique geography, economic structure and political organization. Studies have also used world systems approaches to provide insight into the political and economic drivers of athletic talent migration (Chiba, 2004; Chiba and Jackson, 2006; Darby et al., 2007; Darby and Solberg, 2010; Klein et al., 1994; Magee and Sugden, 2002)

Another challenge is to place the experiential elements of sports migrants within observable patterns of migration. The experiences of several groups of sports migrants have been studied, including association footballers (Elliott, 2012; Lanfranchi and Taylor, 2001; Magee and Sugden, 2002; Stead and Maguire, 2000), cricketers (Maguire and Stead, 1996), baseball players (Chiba, 2004; Klein et al., 1994), ice hockey players (Genest et al.,1994; Maguire, 1996), basketball players (Falcous and Maguire, 2005a; Maguire and Bale, 1994a), rugby union players (Chiba and Jackson, 2006; Magee and Sugden, 2002) and American Collegiate sportspeople (Love and Kim, 2011). Migrant choices are influenced by wider socio-political factors, and the complexity of the personal goals of migrants has emerged (Dabscheck, 2004; Magee and Sugden, 2002; Maguire and Bale, 1994b; Maguire and Stead, 1996, 1998; Mason et al., 1994; Stead and Maguire, 2000). The influence of personal networks and sports institutions on migrant motivations has been emphasized (Maguire and Stead, 1996, 1998; Miller et al., 1994; Stead, 1999). Personal relationships bring the global–local nexus into sharp focus, bringing national, cultural and personal identities, including national identities, to the fore (Bairner, 2001; Elliott and Maguire, 2008; Maguire, 1993b, 2011).

However, the ‘hegemonic usage’ of globalization has been questioned. Authors note the a-spatial and limitless nature of the concept when used to describe deconstruction of barriers to global flows. When used in this way, the concept is given a seemingly boundless explanatory power (Carter, 2011; Massey, 2005; Weedon, 2012). This has been described by Bude and Dürrschmidt (2010: 482) as ‘flow speak’, which tends to promote an ‘image of a cut’n mix culture’ that celebrated mobility and deterritorialized forms of social interaction in an overzealous way’ (Bude and Dürrschmidt, 2010). It is also unclear how, for example, global space can be defined as more than a backdrop against which generalized projections of ‘constant availability’ and ‘technologically restored intimacy’ foster a vision of ‘omnipresence’ and ‘all-at-oncedness’ (Ray, 2007; Tomlinson, 1999). Consequently, there is significant danger of offering the over-generalized claim that globalization includes every process of abstracting mobility across space (James, 2005). In short, Bude and Dürrschmidt (2010: 483) argue that ‘globalization theory has lost track of the idea of ‘limits’. For example, by over-emphasizing the technological annulment of spatial distance, the ‘cultural thickness’ of everyday territoriality can be undervalued (Bude and Dürrschmidt, 2010). In the case of sports labour migration, authors have noted that by emphasizing the unbridled nature of global transfers, the concept of globalization fails to account how groups of sports migrants adapt and resist the ‘ostensibly homogenizing tendencies of globalization’ (Weedon, 2011: 3).

Several theses have been outlined that attempt to overcome the dichotomy between global and local in relation to sports labour migration. For example, the concept of glocalization has been used to highlight how local cultures can critically adapt to or resist global phenomena. This resistance or reinvention has been described as ‘Glocalization projects’ (Giulianotti and Robertson, 2007). Similarly, Weedon (2012) uses the concept of acculturation to demonstrate the interplay between the political economy of globalization and the experiential elements of glocalization projects. According to Weedon (2012: 4), acculturation is ‘a process of intercultural contact in which the migrant in transition actively responds to the “deterritorialization” of their indigenous cultural norms whilst adapting to their host culture’. Taking a lead from intercultural anthropological studies, Weedon (2012) suggests that the concept of acculturation can be useful in describing how migrants engage with four ‘acculturating strategies’. These strategies include assimilation, where migrants actively interact with the host culture whilst showing little or no desire for indigenous cultural maintenance, separation, in which indigenous cultural norms are maintained with no desire to embrace the host culture, marginalization, when neither interaction nor maintenance is desired, and integration, in which both the maintenance of indigenous behaviour and involvement in the host society are sought (Berry, 1997). However, questions remain about the freedom of migrants to consciously adopt such strategies and, as Weedon (2012) himself notes, acculturation is not a matter of simply adopting a strategy but of adapting to the complex political economy in which a migrant is situated.

These theories emphasize space and place in mitigating global flows. Indeed, Carter (2011) advocates the need for an increased emphasis on place. For Carter (2011: 2), models of understanding sports labour migration should shift away from studying only ‘intra-institutional relationships to a focus on power relations manifest in the interplay between different identities and place’. Carter (2011) is critical of previous approaches to sports migration that emphasize the almost free-flowing nature of migration patterns down ‘networks’, because these underplay factors that prevent migration. As Carter (2007, 2011) outlines, migrants forge formal and informal connections between localities so as to produce their own mobility, which can render others immobile. Consequently, places are relational (Carter, 2007). They have multiple connections, both imagined and physical, historical and ephemeral. Interrogation of how migrants understand the foundations of social and cultural life in their place of origin and destination is essential, therefore, in overcoming the limitations of theorizing migration purely in terms of global flows. In short, Carter (2011) argues that network-based approaches tend to overlook how human agency in both formal and informal relationships, as well as an individual’s conceptualizations of place, can have a significant impact on migration choices.

This debate is valuable, and emphasizes how theories of global and local intersections can be used to explain labour migrants’ experiences. However, a sense of the embodied nature of global sports migrants is lacking. Sports labour migration is driven by a trade in athletic labour that is at the root embodied; many of the skills and abilities that are exchanged are based upon the physical and mental capabilities of sports men and women. This has an impact upon the actions of individual migrants, because the body-related life cycle forces the migrant to structure their options into a final life trajectory (Bude and Dürrschmidt, 2010).

The body contours the migratory experience, as do the bodies of others who have relationships with sports migrants. The embodied relationships of family do not travel as easily as a sport migrant’s pay cheque, for instance. Similarly, perceptions of place are also embodied. Ley (2004) outlines how, even amongst highly mobile groups of transnational migrants, choices can be limited by proximity to an airport. Even in such cases, the world experienced by individuals has been shown to be relatively contracted around certain sites, and whilst it has been suggested that local networks can provide a temporary substitute for family and friends left behind at home, they rarely replace them (Kennedy, 2004; Ley, 2004). Virtual networks are, of course, increasing, but Bude and Dürrschmidt (2010) argue that these networks prove a poor substitute for certain intimate face-to-face relationships that are recurrent in embodied family life. It seems that even among the privileged, the limits of human perception place limitations on the notion of unlimited global flows. Perceptions of place can be global, but bodies exist locally.

This study is situated within the wider debate about how the intersection between local and global contour migrant experiences. We consider how a figurational perspective, contrary to the assertion that it is limited by its emphasis on social networks (Carter, 2011), contains many useful tools when related to the experiential and embodied elements of migration. It is therefore worth providing a brief outline of the core elements of the figurational approach to understanding embodied human experience.

As a starting point, the concept of the figuration is useful because it emphasizes the relational character of society, but is not limited to describing formal relationships that exist in established networks. Instead, figurations emphasize human interdependence beyond direct interaction in webs of power balance (Elias and Schröter, 1991). For example, the experiences of a sports labour migrant can be influenced by relationships between people they have yet to meet, such as board directors, and people that they might never meet, such as international labour law lawyers, sports governing bodies, sponsors and the media – all of whom influence the possibility and conditions of migration. These relationships can be ephemeral or long term, formal or informal, personal or virtual, but all have a power balance. Power in the figuration is therefore relational (Jarvie and Maguire, 1994).

Because figurations represent webs, rather than networks, of power balances, all individuals and groups within a figuration are interdependent. Consequently the short-term, intended actions of all individuals intertwine with one another so that they have long-term consequences which can be unintentional. The key point is that complex power hierarchies are created that are beyond the control of any one individual or group. These power balances are also spatial and distributed in a way that is influenced, but not defined, by local cultural, political and physical geographies (Flint and Taylor, 2007). Consequently, figurations are continually in flux. Social order is therefore processual, as relationships and power balances alter over time (Jarvie and Maguire, 1994). Because power balances are contested, relationships in a figuration can be both enabling and constraining. There is therefore nothing necessarily benevolent about networks of relationships in a figuration: each has a contested tensile power balance. Hence, the networks which are sometimes understood to be purely enabling sets of relationships that facilitate sports labour migration must be considered as potentially constraining networks for those that cannot migrate in the same way due to the actions of others.

Culture is also contested within figurations, because individuals or groups can resist, reinterpret and reproduce cultural ideologies. Elias also outlines how, over time, social values have changed due to civilizing processes, and have become internalized beneath the level of conscious control. Elias conceptualized this internalization as the creation of the habitus (Elias, 1982; Elias and Schröter, 1991). The habitus is formed in the non-discursive aspects of culture that bind people into groups, including unspoken habits and patterns of behaviour, as well as body techniques. In other words, the habitus represents the elements of experience to which an individual is familiar, including the mundane actions of everyday life. The habitus therefore represents the melding of innate emotions with learned social behaviours (Elias, 1978), or the durable and generalized dispositions that become a person’s ‘second nature’ (Maguire, 1991, 1993a). Habitus therefore also relates to identity and knowledge of self. It is manifested through an individual’s choices. However, the habitus does not mechanically constrict the actions of an individual, but instead is transferable and enduring. Therefore, while the habitus is influenced by a person’s position in a figuration, the choices of the individual can at the same time influence the figuration (Jarvie and Maguire, 1994; Thing, 2001). This contestation creates established and outsider groups (Elias and Scotson, 1994). Those privy to the social norms deemed appropriate by powerful groups in a figuration become established in certain figurations, while those with norms and values that were not as socially valued become outsiders (Elias and Scotson, 1994).

Moreover, habitus development has a spatial element. The notion that cultures exist in space is a common one in other fields (Lechner and Boli, 2008). Cultural norms are related to place. They are also existential and embodied (Bude and Dürrschmidt, 2010). Global cultural flows can clearly influence the exchange of ideas and practices – but they do not homogenize them. They can be resisted, reinterpreted and changed (Maguire, 2002). After Elias’ study of the changing table etiquette and manners in the civilizing process (Elias, 1982), it can be observed that embodied practices of societies differ spatially – take, for example, differences in the table etiquette between urban Japan and rural Nigeria (Foster, 2000, 2002). Therefore, if the habitus is informed by the cultural norms of a given place, it follows that individuals familiar with shared habitus of one place may not be entirely familiar with the embodied cultural norms of a different place.

This has important links with the concepts of glocalization projects and acculturation (Giulianotti and Robertson, 2007; Weedon, 2011), as well as Carter’s (2011) conceptualization of the simultaneous existence of places. A migrant must adapt to unfamiliar circumstances via acculturation. As Weedon (2011: 7) outlines, acculturation can be viewed as a continuous process in which an individual can adopt different strategies at different times – and so can the process of habitus development. This helps to account for the ‘resistant and adaptive potentialities of the migrant in transition as well as the potentially homogenizing tendencies of the host culture’.

The present study examined the embodied experiences of professional Australasian rugby league players who have migrated to the UK, including Australians, New Zealanders, Papua New Guineans and Melanesians, Polynesians and Micronesians. Rugby league shares colonial roots with both association football and cricket, and it also offers a unique context in which the experiences of labour migrants are set (Maguire and Possamai, 2005; Stead and Maguire, 1998). Rugby league in Europe is associated with the industrial regions of northern England, Wales and France and is grounded in the sport’s working-class, professional roots. This contrasts with the middle-class amateur ethos of Rugby Union (Dunning and Sheard, 1987, 2003). It is also a global sport. Rugby of both codes is well developed in Europe, Australasia, South Africa, Argentina, North America and Japan. Rugby league currently features World Cup finals with teams from 14 nations, including teams from Australasia, the UK, France, Ireland, Italy and the USA. Moreover, the Rugby League International Federation (RLIF) has a total membership of 15 test nations, 25 affiliated nations and 10 non-affiliated nations from six continents.

There is a long history of labour migration in rugby, particularly between Europe, Australasia, Argentina and South Africa (Collins, 2000; Denham, 2000; Maguire and Possamai, 2005; Moorhouse et al., 1994; Phillips, 2004). Today, Australia is the core rugby league region in the southern hemisphere. The Australia–New Zealand National Rugby League (NRL) is widely considered the premier world rugby league club competition, while in Europe the ‘Super League’ remains dominant and is currently contested between teams from England and France, with Welsh teams included in the league hierarchy in lower tiers of the competition. Other semi-professional competitions are also played in the USA (AMNRL), Papua New Guinea (PNGNRL) and South Africa, for example.

Movement between the two club competitions is common (Collins, 2000), but is restricted by a quota system. Super League clubs are limited to five non-European Union nationals and five ‘non-federation trained’ players (i.e. not trained in Europe between the ages of 16 and 21 years) in their playing squad at one time. For instance, although Pacific Islanders and Papuans do not qualify as quota players due to the Cotonou agreement signed in June 2000 (Hurt, 2003), they still count as non-federation trained players if they have not trained in a Rugby Football League (RFL)-administered competition during their early career.

The present study focused upon the embodied experiences of migration among groups of professional rugby league labour migrants moving from Australasia to England to play in the Super League. In order to do so, we interrogated migrants’ perceptions of the process of migration from initial planning through to their foreign sojourn. Key themes included investigating the affect of migration upon migrant identity, migrants’ changing sense of self, acculturation strategies that were adopted and the embodied experience of being a professional athlete in potentially unfamiliar surroundings playing a contact sport.

Methods of inquiry

Participants were professional rugby league players who had migrated to the UK from Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea or the Pacific Islands, including Samoa, Fiji, Tonga, Niue and the Cook Islands. Participants were recruited from the ‘Super League’ competition, which includes English clubs and also has French representation. All Super League players were approached to take part in this research, to which 36% of the total overseas workforce in Super League XI responded. Forty players took part in this research, including 16 players with indigenous Australasian heritage (Papuan, Maori, Aborigine and Pacific Islander), and 24 Australian and New Zealand nationals with ‘European’ heritage. Clubs from which participants were recruited included Leeds Rhinos, Huddersfield Giants, Bradford Bulls, Castleford Tigers, London Harlequins, Wigan Warriors, St. Helens, Widnes, Hull FC and Salford Reds. At the time of research, between 19% (Huddersfield) and 66% (Harlequins) of playing staff were from overseas, a total of 89 players across the competition. Of these players, only three were not from Australasia. In total, 56% of these individuals held Australian nationality (Butcher and Spencer, 2008). Players in this study also had a range of international representative honours, including 13 players with full international honours, 9 players with junior or regional honours (e.g. Australian State of Origin representation) and 18 players with no national representative honours. Participants were aged between 18 and 33 years, with an average age of 27 years. Participants had been in England between 6 months and 9 years, with an average of 2.7 years. A total of 17 participants were relatively recent migrants, having been in England for 1 year or less.

Two data collection methods were utilized: semi-structured interviews (14 responses) and questionnaires (26 responses). All player responses remained anonymous, and pseudonyms are utilized in this paper. Interview schedules contained key themes that were formulated prior to the interviews, based upon prior research (e.g. Stead and Maguire, 1998). These themes included migrant motivations and objectives; living as an overseas sportsman in the UK; the British rugby league experience; and migration as part of a career. The interview schedule varied in individual interviews depending upon the information volunteered by the participant as they delineated their personal ‘common sense’. Interviews were thematically analysed, and codes were grouped into higher order themes. These themes were then used to structure subsequent discussion (Bryman and Teevan, 2004).

The use of a questionnaire was deemed appropriate due its practical applicability to a wider number of participants than could be achieved through interviews alone. Questionnaire items were structured into the same themes as interviews. A variation of question types was incorporated to elicit a mixture of spontaneous and considered results (Bryman and Teevan, 2004). Questionnaire data was deductively coded in a similar light to interview data, and reinforced by conducting descriptive statistics to numerical questions. Trends in quantitative data were used to reinforce or contrast key themes that emerged from the interviews.

Results and discussion

Migration as part of an embodied career: pre-sojourn motivations and preparation

Although subject to a bodily existence always linked to the present, humanity lives ahead of itself in terms of reflexivity for the future. Plans are made, changed and factored in to career paths. This means that human existence transcends the here and now, while at the same time being limited by it (Bude and Dürrschmidt, 2010). During participation in this research, participants were asked about their perceptions of migration as part of a career. The career span of many professional elite athletes is of relatively short duration, due to the increasing physical limitations of the ageing human body (Taylor et al., 2004).Rugby is a full contact sport that has previously been described as a trade in pain. The acceptance of the likelihood of regular pain and injury is accepted and rarely challenged (Pringle and Markula, 2005). This draws the limitations of the body over the long term to the fore. This was a factor that participants in this study considered. For instance, Brent, an Australian, explained his desire for a new challenge whilst he still considered his physical capabilities to be at or near their peak;

I always wanted to move to England, but first of all I had goals I wanted to achieve in Australia…I thought once I’d done all that then I’ll try to go and play in England. I was getting older, but I still wanted to come here when I was still young enough and competitive enough to play good footy.

Similarly to trends found in cricket migrants (Stead and Maguire, 1998), the UK was considered to offer the opportunity to acquire a ‘fresh start’ or to prolong a career. Several players described how their careers had previously been under threat due to a lack of opportunity or injury, while 66% of questionnaire respondents highly valued the opportunity to play ‘first-grade’ or elite rugby league at some point in their careers. Scott, an Australian, explained:

I didn’t really have a good season back home and I was nearly ready to give it away [to retire]. I mean I was only still 22, and so I managed to just sort of come over here, see how I liked it – see what happens, and stayed. I wanted to play rugby league basically.

The quest for opportunity, rather than experience, represents a divergence from findings among other groups of migrants. Stead and Maguire (2000) and Magee and Sugden (2002) demonstrated that association football players often migrated to the UK in order to develop their sporting skills or to seek experience. Here, migrants appeared to seek sporting opportunities, rather than technical development, often during a limited period in their career. However, for the Papuans, and to a lesser extent the Pacific Islanders, the desire to achieve recognition focused upon representing their nation in competition. According to one Papuan player, Seru, Papuan society was ‘far removed from the “Western” world’. Professional sport is largely unknown; one Pacific Islander, Sam, articulated his irritation at how the English ‘took for granted’ the pressures of professional sport. This created different goals that were based less upon finding a club. One Papuan, Epi, elaborated:

My motivation to come here to play rugby league was to wear the national colour. But to come and be paid to do what I love doing was a real shock for me. The word professional didn’t even appear in my mind. I still think to this day I am dreaming everything now.

Differences in outlook were mirrored in participants’ preparation to migrate. Numerous sources were used to prepare for migration to England, many of which were virtual. In Australia, rugby league is widely covered in the media (Denham, 2000). Hence, for Australians and New Zealanders, television coverage of the Challenge Cup, (but not the Super League) was a key source of information about the sport in the UK, but also was of cultural significance. In particular, the Challenge Cup was held in high regard: many players wished to participate before their career ended. One Australian, Scott, recalled how, ‘[watching the Challenge Cup final] was a ritual thing every year. I got the oldies to wake me up at 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning to watch the game’.

In addition, the internet and a long-term following of the game through the media were also useful sources of information. However, many of these sources were limited by existential factors. For example, several virtual sources of information, such as the internet or satellite television, were not available to some Papuans and Pacific Islanders at home. Such limitations forced these players to rely on personal, human networks for information. These networks were created through professional contacts or on a more informal basis. For example, agents were consulted about which clubs might offer opportunities and good conditions of employment. Also, personal experience during tours, family ties, friendships or acquaintances inside and outside of the sport were described as being important sources of information about life in England – however subjective they might have been.

Access to information affected players’ readiness to migrate. It became apparent that, for some players, migration was not something that was always considered at the outset of a professional career. Preparation times varied between many years and 2 days. Shorter preparation times caused unforeseen problems. For those that prepared over a longer period, only existential factors such as the weather caught them unawares. This unfamiliarity re-emphasizes the importance of place in terms of adaptation. Complaining about the weather may seem trivial, but as Australian player Simon stated, ‘you’re moving from the middle of summer into the depths of winter, going dark at 4 o’clock [when you first come to the UK]’. This had a significant impact on lifestyle. One Australian, Lance, described how in Australia the socializing in the evenings, mainly outdoors, was common. In the English winter, this is impossible. This served to emphasize differences between ‘home’ and the UK, which some players felt had to be experienced first-hand before they could be appreciated fully.

Once the decision to migrate had been taken, a key factor defining where and for how long a player migrated for was finance. Material considerations were considered important by all participants. One Papuan player, Seru, stated that ‘if anyone says they are here to play rugby, they are kidding themselves…you know finance is a good thing, if there is a good offer’. It became apparent in this study that during contractual negotiations the personal motivations of migrants became intertwined with the decisions of others in the rugby league figuration. It is therefore to attitudes towards finance, as well as how the process of negotiation was experienced by players, that the discussion now turns.

Negotiating a sojourn

Financial considerations were considered fundamental in contouring career choices. The opportunities offered by favourable wage restrictions in the UK did appeal. While one New Zealander, Gareth, stated mischievously that ‘the main reason was to come over here and to take all the Englishman’s money!’ others were more pragmatic; for one Australian, Lance, ‘[taking] the English pound home to convert to Australian dollars is very worthwhile – I’m here to make money’. New Zealander/Islander Henry also noted the high value of a British Pension. In a similar fashion to cricket migrants (Stead and Maguire, 1998), the ability to maximize an opportunity by bartering was considered vital.

However, the ability to barter was influenced by cultural habitus and the physical capital of a player, as well as the complex interweaving of the intentions of all parties with a stake in contractual negotiations (Shilling, 2003). Both clubs and migrants protected their own interests. For instance, for migrants familiar with the demands of negotiating conditions of employment and contract clauses, contract negotiations could be made from a position of strength, particularly if the player had achieved first-class representative honours (i.e. international test rugby), and particularly if the player had represented one of the primary test nations in global rugby league: Australia, New Zealand or France. For instance, one Australian, Stuart, outlined how:

I managed to play for Australia too and that also helped for bargaining power. It improved my contract value as well so…I’m talking about money but I could demand more over here than I could back home. That made it all a little easier.

For others, notably older Pacific Islanders, New Zealanders and Papuans, seeking a contract was less about making demands and more of financial necessity. Frequently forced out of contracts at home or in the NRL, conditions of employment were harder to negotiate. Seru, a Papuan player moving to England from Australia, stated that his previous NRL club ‘wanted to get in young players coming up and I think spending a lot of money on a couple of us, they had to let 3 or 4 of us go’. Notably, few Australians stated that the same pressures had applied to them. Perhaps due to the success of Australian rugby league over recent decades, Australian players, it seemed, were members of a well-established group in rugby league for whom association with their national team gave them considerable status. The same status was not, perceptually at least, conveyed by participants from other rugby-playing nations.

Contract negotiations were also an embodied experience. Selling personal athletic services was rarely carried out through a third party. Although a number of players mentioned that they had agents, the majority negotiated their own conditions of employment. Those that did so emphasized the importance of face-to-face contact with stakeholders, such as club managers, during negotiations. If this was not possible, participants described how it was essential that negotiations were nevertheless followed carefully first hand. If this failed to be the case, a number of unintended consequences were outlined which, in participants’ opinions, had arisen because they had trusted others to negotiate on their behalf. For instance, in some cases clubs approached players, most notably the Papuan players, who were more reluctant to leave home. Conversely, a number of international-class Australian players personally approached clubs in order to sell their services. In some cases this seemingly ad hoc procedure led to unintended consequences. One Australian, Scott, recounted that:

When I got on the plane, I’d signed to go to [X club]; by the time I got off the plane the deal had fallen through. My agent quickly whisked around, got me set up with [a second club], but couldn’t contact me in the air…so I turned up looking for someone and someone else [from the second club] was there to pick me up, who I walked past about 10 times thinking ‘I know this bloke!’

All players looked for sustained and convincing interest before they committed to a contract. ‘Professionalism’ was noted as being a defining factor in choosing clubs with which to negotiate, as were personal connections and experience gained from tours. This re-emphasized the embodied nature of these relationships, for although information about clubs and individuals in European rugby league is widely available on sources such as the internet, such information was regarded of minimal value when the process of negotiation began – particularly when compared to first-hand accounts given from other players about a club, or experiences of a playing environment. Such sources were considered invaluable because they informed players of the complexity of conditions of employment. Uncertainty was a common feature of contract negotiation. Scott also mentioned the large number of ‘conditions’ that contracts seemed to have, and the multitude of ways a club could ‘get you’. He described how ‘they [the club] sacked [an overseas player] because he didn’t pay his TV licence’, a condition of his contract. Such caution was evident throughout questionnaire data, where reference was consistently made to ensuring all contractual loopholes were investigated prior to committing to a contract.

Again, different experiences were encountered by the Papuans and some Pacific Islanders. According to the Papuans, their home society often operated outside of monetary restrictions. Comments were made about the shock and complication of having to buy food, rather than hunt or grow it. Consequently, lack of financial experience left these groups open to contractual exploitation. It is perhaps no coincidence that many of the players who, in study participants’ opinions, had been released unfairly had not taken first-hand interest in their contractual negotiations until too late. This relative unfamiliarity with negotiation was particularly acute for players from states without strong professional rugby league competitions, such as Fiji, Samoa, Tonga and Papua New Guinea. For many of these players, their first experience of contract negotiation came with either Super League or NRL clubs. Few recalled this initial experience fondly. Perhaps unsurprisingly, all the interviewed Papuan players, and several Pacific Islanders, stated they had actively learned about finance as a result of their experiences, so that they could control negotiations more effectively in the future.

What is clear from these observations is that the process of migration was understood by this group of labour migrants from a first-person perspective, particularly once the reality of moving to play professional sport in Europe became an immediate concern. Furthermore, this study also investigated migrants’ embodied experiences of moving to play rugby league in England in the midst of their foreign sojourn. It is to these experiences that the discussion will now move.

Acculturation strategies and migrant relationships

The present study also investigated participants’ experiences and strategies of adaptation during a foreign sojourn. Participants’ sporting and cultural goals were similarly important to many players. For instance, participants did not emphasize the sporting context to the same extent as demonstrated in other migrant groups, such as association football players (Stead and Maguire, 2000). In this case, the opportunity to reinvigorate a career abroad went together with the desire to travel. Essentially, this meant engaging with unfamiliar European cultures through first-hand experiences. Space was central in this desire. Players who wished to experience different cultures emphasized the smaller distances in Europe when compared to Australasia, in which different cultures are either spread over large distances in islands across the Pacific Ocean, or were a lengthy flight from Australian or New Zealand. One New Zealander, Gareth, emphasized this when describing how England was ‘close to everything, so you can do a lot of travelling’. For some at less successful clubs, the desire to see Europe took precedence over rugby. Geraint, an Australian, stated that ‘definitely one of the passions I’ve got is to travel, and I thought I could come over here and play [rugby league] while I did that’. The desire to travel was linked to the idea that living in Europe would facilitate ‘experience of another lifestyle’. This opinion is contrary to the assumption that migrants moved to the UK primarily due to cultural similarities with Australia and New Zealand. A sense of cultural heritage was also apparent in the perceived value of British rugby league. For example, Australian player Brent mentioned the centrality of the UK to the culture of rugby itself; ‘there’s the little things too, like [the UK] is the birthplace of rugby league’.

However, this was not always the case. Knowledge about the possibilities of travel around Europe, and the concomitant desire to experience cultural plurality, was not always apparent among Papuans and some Pacific Islanders. Limited preparation for migration seemed to be interdependent with less research into the geography of Europe. Seru had apparently learned a little about England at school, ‘as PNG is a colonial country’, or from tours and other players, but he suggested what they had learned did not prepare him adequately. For Seru, the differences between ‘the bush’ and city living in England meant ‘jumping from the first step to the tenth floor.’ Epi, a Papuan, described his feelings about his first few weeks:

What’s in your head is like, what it’s going to be like, till you come over and it’s real, it’s scary. I come from right up in the mountains where you hardly see 10 cars a day, and to come here and [I] saw the traffic lights, lot of buildings, a lot of cars and people, walking too fast, a real shock…I would have gone home the next day, I felt that homesick. But to come over to live here, it’s something you wouldn’t express.

For the Papuans, lifestyle changes made migration challenging. Papuan participants stated that those who persevered were ‘exceptional’, and many compatriots had ‘got into trouble’. It was apparent that established players felt responsibility for those who did not adapt. As a result, the Papuans were reluctant to encourage fellow nationals to make the decision to move abroad unless they were educated first, particularly about money. As Seru noted, many Papuans, including himself, had little notion of the value of money, being accustomed to subsistence farming. Subsequently many spent it unwisely. Indeed, Epi found this to be troublesome because such monetary problems were often resolved by established players (i.e. him). Other problems existed too. As Seru explained, Papuan men do not cook, and live at home until married. The sudden independence and self-sufficiency that migration brought came as a shock. This was underlined by Seru, whose own information came from his brother who had been overseas for a number of years and had written him ‘five pages’ of things that should and should not be done, from where to find food to how to talk to locals. Nonetheless, the Papuans hoped to see more players making the move for the benefit of their national team.

Acculturation strategies, then, were very different between groups with different cultural backgrounds, and consequently different habitus. It seemed that Australians and New Zealanders in particular seemed willing and able to engage with their host culture in ways that were not entirely dependent upon their sporting contacts. A number of such players described the relative ease with which they socialized with locals. However, players with indigenous Australasian ancestry, particularly those without experience of migration to the NRL prior to moving to England, were less able to engage with their hosts. That is not to say they were unwilling to do so – only that, initially, such human interactions had been problematical. Researchers have often described the initial phases of acculturation as being marked by negative issues, including cultural dislocation, loneliness, isolation and unfamiliarity with language and environment (Stead and Maguire, 2000; Weedon, 2011). Indeed, these problems manifested themselves in the relationships that players described had developed during their sojourn.

Relationships were described as vital by all participants in this study. As Carter (2011) notes, moments in migrants’ lives can be contoured as much by personal relationships and career trajectories as by structural constraints inherent in global migration networks. Relationships were both formal and informal, including other players, coaches, club officials, and family and friends. Relationships were often developed or maintained during a sojourn. However, the extent and duration of networks of relationships differed considerably. For Australians, contact with one or two individuals prior to migration was described, whereas networks of compatriots were consulted by New Zealanders and Pacific Islanders prior to their decision to migrate. These networks became a support base and circle of friends after migration. Indeed, networks of New Zealanders, Pacific Islanders and Papuans were described that spanned a number of clubs, and were a way in which players kept in regular contact with compatriots. For New Zealanders, such as Gareth, the support network orchestrated by other New Zealanders and Pacific Islanders made it ‘better to get along day to day’. This physical, embodied network was of central importance to such players, who described that they felt part of a community with similar cultural values away from home.

Members of this group seemed to adopt a separation strategy to acculturation (Berry, 1997; Weedon, 2012). This was initially involuntary. At first some did not feel confident of attempting to integrate fully in a host society. A number of players described initial difficulties in communicating with locals, for example, as being an issue. On the other hand, Australians tended to remain in contact with compatriots less regularly, and reflected on the relative ease of making friends mainly with other members of their clubs and local people – indicating adoption of integration strategies to acculturation (Berry, 1997; Weedon, 2012).

More intimate relationships also played a key part in the migrant experience. Players’ close families frequently moved by association, although to different degrees. Some players moved alone, others’ partners joined them later or for limited periods, while some met partners after migrating. Players with British partners or family members in the UK found the settling-in period easier. Conversely, for some dependents migration was tougher. Some partners failed to find work or returned home, and some players stated that their relationships had broken down as a consequence of their decision to migrate. Consequently, intimate relationships were perceived to be both enabling and constraining. For some, the additional support that the existential presence of family members provided was a boon: they were enabling. For those whose relationships broke down or were spatially dislocated, options were perceptually constrained and additional stress could be created. Other difficulties also presented themselves. One Pacific Islander, Stan, commented upon how club board members had been insensitive toward his wife, which ‘unsettled’ him.

Team-mates were also considered vital in helping make friends and deal with personal challenges, but again, relationships with other players could be both enabling and constraining. Some players deliberately approached team-mates and locals, although some Papuans and Pacific Islanders mentioned that they were initially fearful to do so due to language problems. Largely, however, players felt well received by team mates. This was not always the case with other players though. Again, experiences were embodied. Much of the contact between migrants and other rugby league professionals outside their clubs was during the typically physical and aggressive encounters of rugby league competition. Consequently, while some friendly rivalries had developed, occasionally players encountered a less positive reception, particularly if unable to play due to injury. As Australian Stuart remembered:

…in the first season I had a bad injury, and copped a lot of ribbing from fellow players, a bit of joking type stuff but I’m sure a few of them meant it, saying you’re on holiday, getting the big money and you break down.

As a result of such experiences, some players in this study felt additional pressure to perform because of their migrant status, and a number had continued playing through injuries that might have prevented them playing in other circumstances. In this sense, this group of migrants often perceived themselves as outsiders from the established, indigenous group.

There was also a sense that relationships with team-mates could not replace relationships lost or limited by the great distances to players’ origins. Maintenance of relationships back home was considered important. However, there were limitations to how well these relationships could be maintained. Phone calls, the internet and off-season visits were considered expensive ‘lifelines’, although Papuans and Pacific Islanders were less able to get in contact with family at home. The loss of physical contact with family and friends at home was also considered negatively, and most players stated that they returned home regularly during breaks in the season. Other problems, such as time-differences and the difficulty of arranging times when families could congregate to converse, were also described. Papuans relied on phone calls relayed via relatives in Papuan cities to their villages, or else would return home. This again emphasizes the local limitations to globalizing processes in terms of place, the limits of telecommunication networks, and in terms of the loss of the existential elements of intimate relationships caused by bodies physically moving over space.

The loss or absence of first-hand, personal relationships can increase a player’s sense of isolation (Maguire and Stead, 1996; Stead and Maguire, 2000). Thirty seven from 40 respondents commented upon feeling lonely, despite efforts by team-mates and clubs to assuage this. Papuan player Seru noted:

…the only time that I am lonely and starting to think was at night when I am asleep and I think what am I doing here?…or in the afternoons after we’ve done stuff we come home and maybe half an hour we just stay there and we just talk. You know there’s no family, there’s no friends.

Attitudes towards this group of migrants from the host culture were also of a qualified nature, and could leave migrants feeling isolated. Australian and New Zealander participants, for example, described how they felt attention focused upon national stereotypes. Media reports emphasized player nationality rather than performance, and New Zealander Gareth stated that he felt ‘picked on’ compared with indigenous players. Other Australian players had been referred to by national stereotypes, such as Crocodile Dundee or ‘convicts’. Moreover, several Papuan and Islander players stated that they had encountered other stereotypes at various times in their career. For example, Seru recalled being called a ‘cannibal’, while Epi had been told at school that ‘you will never shake hands with those white boys’ when discussing his desire to play rugby league with his school teachers.

This impacted upon acculturation strategies. Perhaps as a consequence of being referred to in terms of national stereotypes, most players felt their sense of national identity had strengthened. For example, Geraint had the Australian flag on his mobile telephone, while others mentioned watching more Australian TV shows and ‘home’ sporting teams than previously. Unsurprisingly, when asked if they would play internationally for another country, all but one player stated that they would not. The exception was born in England and had moved to Australia at a young age. It irritated many subjects that some of their compatriots had chosen to play for other nations as dual nationals. As Australian Scott observed:

There’s no way they’re anything other than Australians…they’ve made a mockery of the international game… The only qualification they’ve got is that they’ve been for a drink with the coach!

Notably, however, two participants in this research have since played for England rugby, highlighting the potentially ephemeral and multifaceted nature of their national allegiances and strategies of acculturation.

Concluding comments

This study has highlighted a number of issues in a group of culturally diverse labour migrants who are united in their shared experiences of migrating from Australasia to England to play professional rugby league. These experiences are related to globalizing processes, and how these processes are resisted, reinterpreted and reproduced at the local level through personal relationships and a sense of place. The paper has outlined how the interactions between networks of relationships are contested, not only by migrants, but by employers, agents, family members and other formal and informal relationships between individuals. Some of these relationships are enabling, while others constrain migrants’ abilities to control their own career trajectories. However, all of these relationships are embodied, and the importance of existential interaction has been noted on both a mundane level, and during the planning, negotiation and migration processes. Moreover, the networks of relationships that contour labour migration are interdependent with place, culture and the embodied experiences of labour migrants through the habitus. This requires further explanation.

It can be argued that the habitus has a spatial character. Firstly, it exists within bounded, corporeal bodies (Shilling, 2003). These bodies are interdependent with the mind of each individual. Secondly, it is produced in localities that, although influenced by global flows, are also the sites of cultural and ideological contestation. Moreover, the perception of individuals is also limited by their embodiment. Because bodies exist in space, the internalization of culture is dependent upon locality. Cultural constructions that exist beyond the perceptions of individuals cannot be learned, resisted, interpreted or internalized – they are beyond awareness. Consequently, culture is interpreted, resisted and altered, and ultimately internalized by bodies that are limited in time and space. Moreover, as Carter (2011) outlines, the material conditions of a locality, which exist in a multiplicity of localities, are joined by global transfers that are limited and contoured locally in complex ways. These glocalizing projects can begin to define local cultures as a complex interweaving of global and local (Giulianotti and Robertson, 2007). It therefore follows that habitus, or the internalization of culture beneath the level of conscious control, is influenced by place.

Furthermore, imagined communities can exist in more than one space; corporeal bodies are sphere bound spatially and temporally (Anderson, 1986; Shilling, 2003). This limits the extent of the existential relationships an individual can experience at any given time. This study has demonstrated how sports labour migration is an embodied experience. At the root, sports labour migration is constituted by a trade in athletic talent that is inherently corporeal: bodies with the physical and psychological capabilities to play, manage and develop sports. Moreover, bodies have a lifespan. This lifespan influences career choices, because athletic careers are of limited duration. Therefore, athletic talent migration also has a temporal aspect, as well as spatial and cultural ones. In addition, as Carter (2011: 13) describes, athletic talent migration does not exist as an individual act. The trade in athletic talent is influenced by a set of informal and formal relationships that exist in networks, but that are limited and contoured by space and time. They are also in a state of constant flux. For some these relationships are enabling, while for others they are constraining. For sports labour migrants themselves, this can create a complex set of circumstances that can have unintended consequences for career choices.

The intentions of all individuals with a stake in sports labour migration must be navigated by each migrant according to their relative position of power within the overall figuration and their ability to adapt to the conditions under which their sojourn takes place. In this study, for example, it has been noted that those with knowledge of the modern capitalist system, who had access to more enabling personal relationships and who had achieved high levels of recognition in their sport, were better able to control their career trajectories. The disjuncture between the habitus of such players and that of the established groups in their host country was smaller and the social and cultural adaptations less severe. In contrast, those without this embodied habitus, such as some Papua New Guineans and Pacific Islanders, found their ability to negotiate the migration experience more problematical.

The choices of the athletic migrants in this study were always contoured by the actions of others, including other professionals, managers, family and friends. The actions of these individuals also had an impact on migrants’ experiences and emotions. In this sense, the findings of this study underlined the importance of the existential nature of these relationships, which were never adequately replaced by the virtual relationships possible through contemporary telecommunication networks (Bude and Dürrschmidt, 2010). The migrants in this study, regardless of cultural background, expressed feelings of loneliness, unfamiliarity with the social and physical environment, and difficulty in adapting to the cultural norms and expectations of a new place. Even established groups in southern hemisphere rugby league, such as the Australians and New Zealanders, became outsiders upon entering their new place. Individuals had to adapt to the habitus of the established groups in the host location – or not. The degree to which this adaptation was required seemed to depend upon the magnitude of difference between the habitus of the established groups in the rugby league figuration in places of origin and destination. It also depended upon the migrants’ sense of self. Many Australians, for example, engaged in adoption strategies of acculturation, while many Papuan and Islanders adopted initially separation techniques over the short term – and not always voluntarily.

Our findings are by no means a complete explanation of the experiences of all labour migrants in this group. Indeed, the study findings would appear to emphasize the considerable individuality of migrants’ experiences and the complex set of factors that influenced motivations to migrate and the decisions subsequently taken during the migration process. However, some trends did emerge that suggest that subgroups within migrant populations face different conditions of enabling and constraining relationships due to their cultural identity and habitus. Moreover, this study focused upon migrants in the midst of a sojourn; for them, the process of migration is incomplete. Consequently, there is a need to gain greater understanding of what it means to be a migrant over the long term. We also concur with Carter’s (2011) assertion that, in order to fully understand sports labour migration, the experiences of individuals rendered immobile by those who do migrate is necessary. Our study focused upon individuals who physically migrated; the experiences of individuals who had planned to migrate and did not, for whatever reason, would add insight into the experiences of groups of potential migrants as well. This study has highlighted the numerous agencies and networks that contour the experiences of individual migrants. However, there remains additional scope to examine the exact roles of these relationships in facilitating and shaping labour migration among groups with different habitus and at different stages of their careers. Furthermore, some issues, such as the impact of race or ethnicity on the ability of migrants to negotiate conditions of employment, also requires further research. Furthermore, the impact of informal networks of peers and close dependents appeared to be central in contouring the migrant experience in this case. Further investigation into these relationships is required.

Footnotes

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

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