Periodic Reporting for period 1 - JANUSHOPE (Two-Faced Hopes: Football, Migration, and Religion Between West Africa and Europe)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2023-10-01 al 2025-12-31
The MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowship project "JANUSHOPE: Football, Migration, and Religion Between West Africa and Europe" was situated at the intersection of social anthropology and human geography and addressed pressing questions concerning migration, inequality, and future-making. Football has become a major driver of migration aspirations among young Africans, while religion increasingly shapes how migrants interpret risk, hardship, and the possibility of success. At the same time, European policy debates on migration, labor exploitation, and human trafficking often struggle to account for migrants’ affective orientations and subjective motivations.
JANUSHOPE investigated the intersection of football, migration, and religion among West African migrants in Europe through the analytical lens of hope, defined as a belief that something desired may occur in the future. While interdisciplinary research often treats hope as abstract, depoliticized, or inherently positive, the project examined its “two-faced” nature by analyzing how hope can both sustain agency and reproduce inequality and exploitation. By focusing on African football migrants with irregular migration trajectories, the project explored how faith-based narratives of hope may simultaneously critique and reinforce unequal global structures.
The overall objective was to understand how hopes for social mobility through football are formed, maintained, contested, and embodied, and how religion mediates these processes. By foregrounding lived experiences often absent from official statistics and policy frameworks, the project aimed to generate knowledge relevant to academic debates, public discourse, and EU policy priorities related to migration governance, labor exploitation, and trafficking.
JANUSHOPE investigated the intersection of football, migration, and religion among West African migrants in Europe through the analytical lens of hope, defined as a belief that something desired may occur in the future. While interdisciplinary research often treats hope as abstract, depoliticized, or inherently positive, the project examined its “two-faced” nature by analyzing how hope can both sustain agency and reproduce inequality and exploitation. By focusing on African football migrants with irregular migration trajectories, the project explored how faith-based narratives of hope may simultaneously critique and reinforce unequal global structures.
The overall objective was to understand how hopes for social mobility through football are formed, maintained, contested, and embodied, and how religion mediates these processes. By foregrounding lived experiences often absent from official statistics and policy frameworks, the project aimed to generate knowledge relevant to academic debates, public discourse, and EU policy priorities related to migration governance, labor exploitation, and trafficking.
The project was implemented over 27 months and structured around interconnected work packages focusing on data collection, qualitative analysis, and theoretical integration. Qualitative and ethnographic methods formed the core methodological approach.
Data collection included semi-structured interviews with more than 20 West African football migrants in Europe, including Christians and Muslims, and individuals with experiences of exploitation or irregular migration. Ethnographic fieldwork was conducted in multiple European contexts and included informal interviews with football migration brokers (agents), coaches, and lawyers. Media and policy materials related to football migration and narratives of hope were also systematically collected.
The project generated key empirical and analytical contributions to migration studies by offering a nuanced account of migrants’ agency that avoids binaries such as legal/illegal, victim/agent, or rational/irrational migrant. By foregrounding hope as an affective disposition shaped by labor markets, border regimes, and religious imaginaries, the project complements structural analyses while retaining attention to lived experience. These findings are documented in a peer-reviewed open-access article published in "Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies" (2025; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2025.2462247(si apre in una nuova finestra)).
In addition, the project advanced research on lived religion by emphasizing religious engagements with uncertainty, imagination, and the future. Approaching Christianity, Islam, and African religious traditions as lived religions, the analysis demonstrated how religious narratives and practices both contest and legitimize unequal global structures without essentializing religion. These results are presented in two peer-reviewed open-access articles published in "Africa" (2024; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0001972024000524(si apre in una nuova finestra)) and "Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute" (2026; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.70022(si apre in una nuova finestra)).
Data collection included semi-structured interviews with more than 20 West African football migrants in Europe, including Christians and Muslims, and individuals with experiences of exploitation or irregular migration. Ethnographic fieldwork was conducted in multiple European contexts and included informal interviews with football migration brokers (agents), coaches, and lawyers. Media and policy materials related to football migration and narratives of hope were also systematically collected.
The project generated key empirical and analytical contributions to migration studies by offering a nuanced account of migrants’ agency that avoids binaries such as legal/illegal, victim/agent, or rational/irrational migrant. By foregrounding hope as an affective disposition shaped by labor markets, border regimes, and religious imaginaries, the project complements structural analyses while retaining attention to lived experience. These findings are documented in a peer-reviewed open-access article published in "Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies" (2025; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2025.2462247(si apre in una nuova finestra)).
In addition, the project advanced research on lived religion by emphasizing religious engagements with uncertainty, imagination, and the future. Approaching Christianity, Islam, and African religious traditions as lived religions, the analysis demonstrated how religious narratives and practices both contest and legitimize unequal global structures without essentializing religion. These results are presented in two peer-reviewed open-access articles published in "Africa" (2024; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0001972024000524(si apre in una nuova finestra)) and "Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute" (2026; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.70022(si apre in una nuova finestra)).
JANUSHOPE goes beyond the state of the art by developing a critical and empirically grounded theory of hope. A central scientific result is the conceptualization of “embodied hope,” which understands hope as an affective, material, and bodily disposition rather than a purely cognitive or discursive orientation. By grounding hope in observable practices such as football training and religious ritual, the project provides new analytical tools to study future-making as socially situated and materially enacted. These results are currently under review in an international peer-reviewed journal in social anthropology.
This theoretical contribution advances interdisciplinary debates on hope by demonstrating that hope is politically consequential: it can sustain perseverance under conditions of precarity while simultaneously enabling exploitation. The framework also offers methodological guidance for studying aspirations beyond probabilistic or choice-based models. Furthermore, the results have started to be communicated to a broader public via online publications in "Africa Is A Country" (2024; https://africasacountry.com/2024/02/the-magic-of-the-beautiful-game(si apre in una nuova finestra)) and "The Religion Factor" (2024; https://www.rug.nl/research/centre-for-religious-studies/research-centres/centre-religion-conflict-globalization/blog/raphael-dwamena-a-death-foretold-consider-factors-beyond-personal-faith-and-religious-zeal?lang=en(si apre in una nuova finestra)). Further uptake would benefit from comparative research across other migration corridors and labor sectors and interdisciplinary dialogue with policy-oriented research on labor exploitation, trafficking, and sport governance. Further communication will include one more online publication and a public lecture.
This theoretical contribution advances interdisciplinary debates on hope by demonstrating that hope is politically consequential: it can sustain perseverance under conditions of precarity while simultaneously enabling exploitation. The framework also offers methodological guidance for studying aspirations beyond probabilistic or choice-based models. Furthermore, the results have started to be communicated to a broader public via online publications in "Africa Is A Country" (2024; https://africasacountry.com/2024/02/the-magic-of-the-beautiful-game(si apre in una nuova finestra)) and "The Religion Factor" (2024; https://www.rug.nl/research/centre-for-religious-studies/research-centres/centre-religion-conflict-globalization/blog/raphael-dwamena-a-death-foretold-consider-factors-beyond-personal-faith-and-religious-zeal?lang=en(si apre in una nuova finestra)). Further uptake would benefit from comparative research across other migration corridors and labor sectors and interdisciplinary dialogue with policy-oriented research on labor exploitation, trafficking, and sport governance. Further communication will include one more online publication and a public lecture.