Mega-Event Mobilities

A Critical Analysis

Noel B. Salazar, Christiane Timmerman, Johan Wets, Luana Gama Gato, Sarah Van den Broucke

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781315440101
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Hospitality, Travel & Tourism Industry
• Index: Business

Global sports events are rarely far from the public eye. Such mega-events are about much more than the sporting competitions themselves. They entail global exposure and intense struggles by different stakeholders.

This is the first book to examine sports mega-events from a mobilities perspective. It analyses the 'mobile construction' of global sports mega-events and the role this plays in managing labour, imaginaries, policies and legacies. In particular, the book focuses on the tension between the various mobilities and immobilities that are implied in the process of constructing a mega-event. It seeks to uncover the ways in which an event is a series of fluid interactions that occur sequentially and simultaneously at multiple scales in diverse spheres of interaction. Contributions explore the dynamics through which mega-events occur, revealing the textures and nuance of the complex systems that sustain them, and the ways that events ramify throughout the international system.

1
Pulling back the curtain

On mobility and labour migration in the production of mega-events

Thomas F. Carter

Preamble

‘BEHOLD! The Great and Wonderful Oz!’

Like the supplicants coming to see the Wizard of Oz, there is a sense that humble, everyday folk should tremble before the magisterial might of the Olympic and other mega-event wizards producing the spectacles set before lowly supplicants/ consumers. The opening ceremonies are the grandest performance of the Olympic spectacle. The ‘magic’ behind the scenes is one that the public is not meant to know. That magic includes massive amounts of labour by a range of labourers. We are to be ‘wow-ed’ by the extravagance of it all without wondering what the actual costs of such an entertainment might be. The centrality of the Olympics as the quintessential mega-event, and the most spectacular product of the mega-events industry, means that crucial questions regarding how more basic products (i.e. buildings, equipment and clothing) necessary for the manufacture of a spectacle are predominantly ignored. Furthermore, the focus on the Olympic spectacles themselves makes it appear that these sorts of happenings are the most important activity happening on the planet (Girginov, 2010; Horne & Whannel, 2012; Miah & Garcia, 2012).

Yet what goes on behind the curtain, so to speak, is eminently vital. This chapter highlights what happens away from prying eyes and examines one facet of the relations of production that structure the production of global sport spectacles. As much as these spectacles themselves can be considered mobile, the degree to which the labour that produces these bloated, orgiastic celebrations of global capitalism is also mobile is the central concern of this chapter. In doing so, it considers how the (im)mobility of different classes of labour involved in the production of any such spectacle might be applied to mega-events. Mobility itself is problematised as an appropriate tool for understanding the production of mega-events. I suggest that mobility is useful if it is recognised as a form of capital – capital, as Marx identified long ago (1992), is of course a specific set of social relations rather than a set of deterministic systems structuring one’s existence. The question of mobility, therefore, becomes a means to examine the class relations involved in New Economic Order sport (NEOsport) (Carter, 2011a). At the heart of this question is how class position affects the (im)mobility of labour and how (im)mobility shapes class position. The production of mobility then is a precarious aspect of labour itself that is dependent upon one’s class position in the global production of mega-events. Transnational labour migration is clearly shaped by class relations within global capitalism.

This work draws on long-term research that incorporates ethnographic fieldwork conducted over the last eighteen years in which I trained, travelled, lived and remained part of various migrants’ lives across three continents (Europe, North and South America). Participant observation data is partnered with extensive life/career history interviews of various professionals, including athletes, coaches, administrators, journalists and medical, marketing, public relations and IT professionals. In all, over 200 migrants, who were at various stages of their transnational careers, have been involved in this study in a variety of global sports within NEOsport. Although the majority of these interviews have been with the more visible migrants (athletes and coaches), this chapter focuses on migrants not readily visible yet vital to the spectacular productions and accumulation of capital that compose NEOsport industries. That they chose to share their lives with me over the years I have been conducting fieldwork on transnational sport migration fills me with respect and care for their own experiences. In this chapter, one particular migrant’s experiences are used to demonstrate the precarity of producing mobility within this industry. His story is used precisely because his precariousness and continuous challenges to produce mobility reflect both the overall migratory experiences of working in this industry and broader industrial concerns regarding the exploitation of NEOsport workers.

Consequently, this chapter illustrates the centrality of class position in the production of mobility and immobility by contrasting the nearly complete immobility of the much of the most impoverished yet inextricably essential labour with the more mobile labourers who provide other forms of labour vital to the production of mega-events. The emergence of a set of highly skilled professionals who travel from mega-event to mega-event carrying vital knowledge necessary for the production of any such spectacle is a NEOsport phenomenon. Many individuals involved in the production of mega-events began their migratory careers with the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games. At that time, institutional authorities recognised no need for a set of ‘experts’ in mega-event production that could travel from site to site to ensure a spectacle of ‘Olympic quality’ or ‘FIFA quality’. IOC officials began to acknowledge the importance of this professional knowledge only in the build-up to the Sydney Games, and those Games were the first attempt to capture this knowledge. Discussed later in this chapter, the attempt to institutionalise this knowledge was understood by these professionals as a threat to their livelihood and mobility. The Olympics are not the only sport-related mega-event, of course. Other spectacles also need the same skills and knowledge, and many migrant professionals, such as the case study used in this chapter, started in the 1990s working Pan American, Asian, Goodwill, and Commonwealth Games as well as various World Cups around the world.

These spectacles are crucial elements in the ‘economy of appearances’ of global capital in which the possibility of economic performance must be conjured to draw an audience of potential investors (Tsing, 2005, pp. 57–58): the more spectacular the conjuring, the more possible an investment frenzy. Capital accumulation thus becomes a performed spectacle that demonstrates and asserts financial viability and status. Mega-events are the spectacles of this globalised economy acting as demonstrative evidence that the host city in question is a significant player in global capitalism. Cities either have to be seen to be dynamic, progressive, modern – in a word, ‘global’ – before actually economically becoming so irrespective of their actual economic condition (e.g. Seoul, Beijing, Rio) or, for those already accredited with such status (e.g. London, Tokyo), they must continue to be seen to be so (Carter, 2011b). Hosting sport-related mega-events is increasingly essential to strategically claim status as being ‘global’, and when they go wrong, it is an utter disaster for the city in question (Majumdar & Mehta, 2010). These dramas of spectacular accumulation essentially make host sites a commodity, bought and sold, torn down, speculated upon and fought over, in which ‘that which appears is good, that which is good appears’ (Debord, 1995, p. 5). But if that which appears is good, what does that say about those aspects that do not readily appear? What about the unseen and hidden labour that underpins these celebratory spectacles?

A question of mobility

Living beings certainly can move, and movement may be an inherent condition of life, but mobility is not an inherent biological condition. Rather, mobility exists as a condition produced out of a set of relations. More specifically, mobility is a form of capital produced in the relationship between social agents that facilitates the movement of resources – most particularly, labour. Mobility may be an aspect of the social conditions in which some people find themselves, but the ability to become mobile frequently necessitates that others become immobile (Carter, 2011a, p. 32; Salazar & Smart, 2011). ‘This is true not only between classes of labour involved in the production of global sport, such as the differences between athletes and factory workers, but also in the direct competition for positions within NEOsport’ (Carter, 2011a, 186). Thus, the ability to produce mobility is the harnessing of various social relations that only some individuals are able to effect. Even when mobility can be produced, it is tenuous and precarious (Carter, 2011a, p. 97).

The question of mobility revolves around the power to engender specific kinds of movement. How mobility is produced – materially and conceptually – requires asking, ‘How and why do people move?’ Answers to these questions manifest in diverse, locally deployed power geometries, embodied in various forms of social distinction (e.g. class, race, gender), help determine who can and cannot travel within a given polity, as well as who is allowed to enter or leave said polity (Adey et al., 2014; Creswell and Merriman, 2012). Those institutions may be local, national or global in their effect, yet it is a person’s relationship with that institution that is the crucial aspect of mobility. Thus, mobility is inextricably produced in social relations, relations that often stretch across boundaries and link seemingly disparate places. The conditions in those places and the relations between them shape migrants’ ability to produce their own mobility (Carter, 2011a, pp. 33–44).

This chapter continues an earlier argument of mine that mobility is not a system or set of structural systems but a form of capital that migrant labourers work hard to produce (Carter, 2011a, p. 17). Richard’s recounting of his career discussed later in this chapter is an example of dozens of other transnational sport migrants I have interviewed over the past two decades. Their narrative histories support this particular shift from mobility as an analytical concept that frames social life based on technical systems and their technologies to one of productive social relations – that is capital. Individuals’ ability to produce this peculiar form of capital within the global capitalist system is crucial for the maintenance of the NEOs-port industry and the spectacles that it sells. The focus on the performative aspects of mega-events as a discrete object of study is counterproductive, however. The performance of the spectacle, while important, should not be the central concern of scholars, but the broader politics of production of that spectacle. To enact such a shift in emphasis to one on how spectacles are produced through migratory, transnational labour and global commodity chains changes the analytical scale and focus from localised processes to transnational ones. The leaders of global governing bodies and other NEOsport industry leaders view their domain from this perspective; it behooves us to adopt similar perspectives to better analyse and comment on the power relations of this industry. One way to accomplish this task is to probe the ways in which the labour of these spectacles becomes and stays mobile and the ways in which labour is migratory.

To understand mobility as a form of capital roots the concept in the power relations found within global capitalism. The proliferation of new forms of capital certainly generates new kinds of social relations, as Marx thoroughly demonstrated (1992). Yet Marx also demonstrated that capital itself is a peculiar form of social relation that produces the fetishism of commodities; each fetish obscures the actual relations that lie behind the form of each. Instead of mobility being the systemic, generative structure permitting new social relations, mobility is itself a social relation produced through obscured relationships of power. As a form of capital, mobility manifests via the interrelationships between a number of different social actors all working in concert to produce and control that capital, whether those actors are family members, friends, bureaucrats, state officials, coaches and other professionals (Carter, 2011a, p. 125). Neither a commodity for exchange nor a fetish hiding relations, mobility is a form of capital that is used to produce global sport, the athletes we cheer and the spectacles we absorb in awe.

An apparent conflation of mobility with movement must be avoided. Social objects, including capital, certainly move but they do not beget their own mobility. Movement is the individual capacity to physically shift from one locality to another (Carter, 2014, p. 169). Movement, though, is more than shifting across geographic space. Movement broadly entails a body’s ability to shift its material being from one physical position to another. Note that movement, unlike mobility, is not contingent upon any form of social relation. One can shift one’s bodily position without having to enact a social relationship. A further distinction between movement and mobility is an ability to enact specific kinds of movement. Any living being can enact physical movements; to enact mobility, however, requires a specific set of social relationships to exist and be enacted. Mobility, though, does not delineate the kind of movement that might be enacted. Rather, mobility demarcates certain forms of movement individuals are able to enact. When those forms of movement cannot be enacted, then the entity in question is not mobile but immobile.

In light of this distinction between (im)mobility and movement, it is also clear that migration and mobility are two distinct aspects of movement. The distinction between movement and mobility is also pertinent to distinguishing between movement and migration. Migration is a particular form of movement that is also predicated upon a specified set of social relations. Migration is most often thought to be movement of people involving crossing an international border for a specific purpose. While international tourism and international migration both include the crossing of political borders, the intent, duration and mode of travel are deemed to differ and thus indicate two very different movement processes (Castles & Miller, 2009). Authorities often attempt to dictate, restrict and regulate the when, where and means of effecting any such movement, but their reasons for doing so frequently differ. Sovereign powers often classify migrants based on their motivations for movement and those classifications often affect their ability to produce mobility. Migrants’ motivations are often political and/or economic, predicated on the fleeing of violence, an attempt to escape oppression or the seeking out of economic opportunity. Migration, then, is often founded upon a set of social relationships between an individual and one or more political states. Even migrants seeking economic opportunity, either within one’s own country, most commonly travelling from the rural areas to an urban conurbation, or across state borders to more vibrant economic centres where wealth is perceived to accumulate more readily, are still enmeshed in a set of relations with one or more states. Thus, although migration need not involve the crossing of political borders, it is shaped by specific sets of political economic relations. Migration, then, is a specific kind of movement process embedded within specific political economic relations such that only certain classes of migrants are able to produce mobility.

Class and labour migration

To speak of migration in relation to sport mega-events in general is to speak of labour migration. Without a massive, mobile workforce across numerous professions, these global spectacles simply could not happen. Migrant workers are in high demand during the construction phase and around the time of the event itself in the hospitality, cleaning, catering, transport and security sectors. Some are recruited directly by the local organisers or agencies acting on their behalf for work on official sites. Others are hired by businesses, such as hotels and restaurants that may have no formal or official involvement. Many of these migrants also are on temporary contracts and lack legal protection, and allegations of abuses in the procuring of construction materials, fixtures and fittings, technology, sporting goods, uniforms (i.e. for squads and officials), merchandise, medals and food production have surfaced repeatedly. The specificities of the regulation of this movement involve state and non-state authorities. Any given state has specific immigration policies for the issuing of work visas, and while major mega-event spectacles’ international sport federations often possess the clout to have those regulations relaxed, altered or otherwise ignored, this is mostly required for the invisible labour involved in the production of these spectacles instead of the visible labours of athletes and coaches. All of these different labour forces are composed at least in part by migratory labour, and yet no mention is made of the labour required for such spectacles beyond the obvious: the athletes, the governing bodies and the rainmakers. Yet thousands upon thousands of others, often invisibly, work long hours to provide the necessary materials, knowledge and skills for these spectacles to occur. Yet it is clear that these behind-the-scenes, horrific working conditions, hidden by elaborate subcontracting relationships, do not resemble the human condition these spectacles celebrate.

Factory workers who will never approach any mega-event venue are essential for the spectacle’s success fo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: exposing sports mega-events through a mobilities lens
• 1 Pulling back the curtain: on mobility and labour migration in the production of mega-events
• 2 The production of the spectacle: conceptualising labour and global sports mega-events
• 3 Olympic City Los Angeles: an exploration of the urban imaginary
• 4 Virtual mega-event imaginaries and worldmaking imperatives in Rio 2016
• 5 Made in transit: mega-events and policy mobilities
• 6 The relay of mega-event activism: why global organising bodies need to be targeted
• 7 Sport mega-events as mega-projects: interaction effects and local mobilities
• 8 Leveraging the Olympic Games: universal and local imaginaries and mobilities
• 9 An agenda for future mega-event research
• Afterword: mobilities and mega-events: four challenges, one warning
• Index