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The primary purpose of this study was to examine the motivation factors associated with American volleyball athletes' migration to Korea and to identify the constraints that interfered with their leisure pursuits away from their primary sport engagement. Using semi-structured in-depth interviews with 12 participants, four themes were identified under migration motivation: (1) career extension and longevity, (2) monetary compensation, (3) cultural experiences, and (4) coach/player recommendations, and three themes under leisure obstacles associated with acculturation: (1) language barrier, (2) lack of time, and (3) limited social networks. This study provides athletes with information on migration motivation and what elements prevent them from thoroughly engaging in leisure participation while they are stationed abroad.

In this chapter, we discuss masculinity in relation to Swedish sports for children with refugee backgrounds. Specifically, we explore how the structure of sports shapes the distinct conditions for their athletic endeavours, including the traits associated with masculinity, which are perceived favourably in sports because they align with the physical and mental norms of male athletes, thereby reinforcing hegemonic masculinity. Moreover, we aim to show that perspectives valorising masculinity can frame children with refugee backgrounds as passive athletes who lack agency. Thus, we discuss two refinements of inclusivity in sports for children with refugee backgrounds in terms of (a) stereotyped notions of gender and refugees and (b) substantial links between desired masculinity and expectations of a perfect match with the Swedish sports system.

This chapter examines changes in Nigerian family roles because of the gap that exists in communication between left-at-home footballers' wives and their absentee husbands who are working at significant distances from their families' permanent residence. Based on a study of 12 football (i.e., soccer) players in the Nigeria Professional Football League (NPFL) and contextualized within the field of sport labor, the study adds knowledge about the impact of footballer migration on left-behind families. The interview data produced five major themes: long-distance marital communication, effects of a paternalistic family culture, extended family issues, effects of father's absence on children, and effects of loneliness and loss of intimacy on wives. The results demonstrate changing roles among the married couples and extended families who were investigated in this study, perhaps indicating what is happening among similar families in Nigeria. It is notable that although the demands of professional football create this impact on families, there is considerable cultural resistance to role changes, because these changes grant the women new and possibly unexpected roles and increased domestic power. Their husbands, despite being away from home, appear to resist these changes and struggle to assert traditional power from afar. In many cases, the women expertly maneuver around this struggle and, in cases where disagreements emerge, they often use effective strategies to resolve problems and maintain a united family.

This chapter argues that football is central to specific regional, hegemonic masculinities within colonial histories and continuities in South India. Through ethnographic narratives of a prominent football figure associated with the Malabar Special Police, this chapter shows how different performances of a particular mode of masculinity draw power from multiple sites such as regional class networks, colonial legacies, and postcolonial sport. This work demonstrates how a (post) colonial space shores up the powers associated with a male sporting figure. The regional format of a sport is as important as the global format in producing regional, hegemonic masculinity. Analysing the powers and aura associated with this sporting figure helps one to understand the specific meanings of desire and aspirations for status and stability among a section of men in a South Indian context.

In this chapter, I study athlete activism as practices of collective care in the context of football communities in Kerala, India. This particular collective is formed through a network of football players, fans, organizers of tournaments, team managers, and families of these actors. I look at these practices through two different yet interconnected “events.” One event is the public discussion of a form of care represented in the Malayalam movie titled Sudani from Nigeria (2018). The movie shows the acts of care centered on the mothers of a local football team manager and an African player who plays for a local team in Malabar. The other event that I seek to study is a campaign not yet fully articulated nor has generated significant discussions in the public sphere possibly because of its emerging nature. A local team manager organized a campaign during the initial months of the COVID-19 lockdown to facilitate the safe return of African players in the Malabar tournament circuit. The campaign led to the establishment of a network of care that is invested in the welfare of migrant athletes. Through these two events, I will look at what constitutes athlete activism at a translocal level in South India. I argue that such practices of care reconstitute the relationships among the people across the region as well as the people's relationship with the state. These practices of care recognize the inequalities in terms of race, class, and nationality and encourage action toward social change.

Along with the national government's expectation transformation, administrative system reform, economic transition, social demand structure's upgrading and population change, these negative effects are turning increasingly obvious and thus become huge powers that push the reform of traditional elite sports development mode forward. Against this background, in order to make this reform better adapted to China's reality and future development, the chapter suggests that Chinese traditional elite sports development mode should shift its driving forces of development from single to multiple, change its administrative system from government-oriented to society-oriented, develop its training concepts from instrumentalism to humanism, improve its construction of development from unbalanced to balanced and alter its effectiveness of development from extensive to intensive so as to achieve sustainable development.

This chapter critically evaluates whether football can attain recognition as a national sport in China. Article No. 11, released by the Chinese government in 2015, aimed to develop a new national strategy centralised on the sport of football to foster consumption and enhance national soft power. Consequently, this also means encouraging Chinese football fans to support the national football team. Comparing the significance of local football clubs and the national football team to Chinese football fans is deemed meaningless and unable to generate useful information to comprehend Chinese people's attitudes towards local and national communities. Through literature comparisons with established Chinese national sports such as Chinese martial arts, badminton and table tennis, the discussion reveals that football currently falls short of meeting the general criteria of invention and popularity to be considered a Chinese national sport. In the specific Chinese context, it also proves that football fails to meet the criterion of politics, hindering its identification as a national sport. Consequently, the chapter rebuts the assumption and advocates for the validity of comparing how fans assess their fandom for local and national football teams.

Although Korean sociology of sport is relatively unknown to the international community of scholars, it is a mature field in Korea. Sociology of sport was first introduced in Korea in the mid-1960s when the field first evolved in North America and Europe. However, the development of the field shows different aspects from its Western counterpart due to unique cultural and environmental factors both in academia and in society. There are three major research trends that form Korean sociology of sport. First, there is the research focus on the benefit of sport and physical activity by examining empirical data using quantitative methodologies. The second group of researchers pays attention to individual experience in diverse sport fields and utilize qualitative methodologies to investigate empirical or secondary data. The third and most recent trend is a critical approach that theoretically analyzes ideologies, power relations, and identity politics in sport and society. When looking at the future, there are problems and limitations within the field in Korea. These include lack of continuity in terms of conference sub-themes, over-production of doctoral degree graduates, conservatism rooted in the field, and a danger of regarding sport policy research as an exit for sport sociologists. However, there are also possibilities and reasons for optimism. The biggest possibility for Korean sociology of sport is globalization of the field. Another significant possibility is the need for sport sociologists in planning, developing, and evaluating sport policy. Finally, diversification of the field gives ample opportunities for future research.