Fighting global uncertainties: a case-study of the post-communist migrations of Hungarian professional footballers

This thesis embraces the themes of globalisation, labour migration, sport in general, and, football in particular. The main focus of this work is the migration of male professional football players in and out of Hungary's professional football teams. The aim of the study is to map existing migration patterns of Hungarian and foreign footballers playing in Hungarian professional teams, to sociologically make sense of the lived experiences of Hungarian migrant players and to investigate whether the 'triple-function' of Hungary as a host, transit and donor country exists in football migration. In doing so, an historical overview of Hungarian football is developed, a quantitative data set is presented and analysed representing the number of migrant footballers in Hungary and Hungarian players in the first division football teams of UEFA countries. Moreover, foreign and Hungarian players, and key officials of three first division football teams are interviewed, together with officials of the Hungarian Football Association to gain further insight into the given matter and to shed light upon the lived experiences and personal struggles of migrant footballers. Finally, the changing footballing conditions of Hungary are outlined, based on interview-generated data and in relation to the findings of the preceding chapters. Data analysis, through a process-sociologically driven account, provides both an empirically and a theoretically efficient explanation regarding the selected theme. The findings are analysed with reference to local, regional and global footballing processes and within the wider theoretical debate surrounding globalisation of sport and football migrations.