ABSTRACT
This chapter serves as a counter-weight to populist interpretations of migrating African football players that depict them through a prism of powerlessness, desperation and an ‘escape from poverty’ discourse. Such representations conceal the agency enacted by players and, crucially for the purposes of this chapter, by their families as they navigate their way to football academies. The chapter focuses on two young Ghanaian players and their extended families and seeks to make sense of how they negotiate decision-making processes around moving to an academy. The article makes a novel contribution to our understanding of African player mobility, positioning, as it does, the family unit, intergenerational reciprocity and the lived experiences of players at the centre of our analysis.
