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Abstract
<p class="first" id="d8597907e75"> The migration of male African youth within the
football industry—particularly cases
involving human trafficking—has become a subject of academic and political interest.
This paper contributes to work on this topic and to literature on the agency of youth
in the urban Global South by turning the academic gaze away from European actors and
settings, and towards their African counterparts. Drawing upon research conducted
in Ghana, the paper reveals how youth perceive migration through football as a solution
to the socioeconomic uncertainty and life constraints facing them in neoliberal Accra.
This perception is tied to broader representations of spatial mobility as a precursor
for social mobility. Youth attempt to achieve spatial mobility through football by
‘trying their luck’, a form of social navigation that is used to mediate the uncertainty
associated with this strategy for realizing spatial change. Through illustrating why
youth want to be spatially mobile and how they attempt to do so through football,
this paper demonstrates why studies of African football migration need to engage better
with how conditions inside the football industry interact with those beyond it.
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