The quick­en­ing phe­nom­e­non of ath­let­ic tal­ent pur­chase through im­mi­gra­tion has been dis­played in full bloom at the Tokyo Olympics. Eu­rope is the ma­jor buy­er, Africa, the Caribbean and oth­er parts of the non-Eu­ro­pean world are the ma­jor sell­ers of the tal­ent.

The trans­fer of the im­mi­grant ath­letes, first, sec­ond and third gen­er­a­tions is be­ing vi­su­alised to a glob­al au­di­ence, not so iron­i­cal­ly, in the midst of ag­gra­vat­ed racism against non-whites in North Amer­i­ca and Eu­rope.

The mi­gra­tion phe­nom­e­non of this gen­er­a­tion is the re­sult of the clas­sic “push and pull” analy­sis. Peo­ple are be­ing pushed out of their home coun­tries in the agri­cul­tur­al, non-in­dus­tri­al world by harsh eco­nom­ic, so­cial and po­lit­i­cal con­di­tions of “un­free­dom”.

The pull to the in­dus­tri­al coun­tries is the at­trac­tion of eco­nom­ic pros­per­i­ty. In the in­stance of the ath­letes, op­por­tu­ni­ties to share in qual­i­ty train­ing fa­cil­i­ties and coach­ing, and for the nat­ur­al de­sire of the ath­letes for en­hance­ment and ad­vance of their lives are gained.

Those have been fac­tors which have pushed and pulled ad­ven­tur­ers from the time of the cre­ation and es­tab­lish­ment of so­ci­ety; they will sure­ly con­tin­ue to be the ma­jor rea­sons for the fore­see­able fu­ture. My col­league Orin Gor­don in an­oth­er news­pa­per has iden­ti­fied a large num­ber of in­ter­na­tion­al ath­letes who have changed their coun­tries of af­fil­i­a­tion in sport for the above rea­sons and more.

In our in­stance we go back in time when the 100 yds sprint­er Mc­Don­ald Bai­ley won a bronze for his adopt­ed coun­try, the Unit­ed King­dom, in the 1952 Olympic Games in Helsin­ki, Fin­land. A few gen­er­a­tions of West In­di­an crick­eters, stretch­ing back to the 1930s in­clu­sive of Con­stan­tine, Headley and the era of the 3Ws have trad­ed their ser­vices to crick­et teams in Eng­land, Aus­tralia, Pak­istan and In­dia. To­day, West In­di­ans are amongst in­ter­na­tion­al crick­eters em­ployed in T20 leagues around the world.

A few of our trans­port­ed crick­eters of the last gen­er­a­tion, such as the great Clive Lloyd, have gained re­spectable sta­tus abroad for their crick­et­ing con­tri­bu­tions to their adopt­ed coun­tries.

To build on the lead giv­en by Orin, I put for­ward a few is­sues for deep­er re­search and con­tem­pla­tion than I have been able to en­gage in re­gard­ing those mat­ters. First, it is ac­knowl­edged that the ath­letes who have trad­ed their na­tion­al­i­ty have ben­e­fit­ed from su­pe­ri­or fa­cil­i­ties, sci­en­tif­ic train­ing meth­ods and eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits in their adopt­ed coun­tries.

Those gains are bal­anced against the con­tri­bu­tions the im­mi­grant ath­letes have made to their adopt­ed coun­tries. They have won medals, pro­duced qual­i­ty per­for­mances, all of which have en­hanced the val­ue and stand­ing of those so­ci­eties and cul­tures in the in­ter­na­tion­al en­vi­ron­ment.

On the fields of in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball, overt racism against mi­grant foot­ballers con­tin­ues to be vir­u­lent and threat­en­ing against play­ers im­port­ed from Africa, the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca. In keep­ing with the gen­er­at­ed con­flict over cul­tur­al and eth­nic in­te­gra­tion, Eu­ro­pean and Eng­lish foot­ball teams are colour­ful­ly adorned with blacks, browns and oth­er non-Eu­ro­peans. French, Eng­lish and Ger­man foot­ball teams con­tain an un­be­liev­able num­ber of im­mi­grants. This is hap­pen­ing and giv­ing mo­ti­va­tion to vi­o­lence against those groups of cit­i­zens who play for their na­tion­al teams.

This is hap­pen­ing even though gen­er­a­tions of such im­mi­grant play­ers have brought great val­ue, ex­cit­ing in­no­va­tion and pro­vid­ed amaz­ing crowd ap­peal.

Fo­cused re­search will find out if the Olympic ath­letes and their kin have been and con­tin­ue to be al­lowed first-class cit­i­zen­ship by their adopt­ed coun­tries and so­ci­eties in ex­change for their con­tri­bu­tions. On the face of it though, the con­tin­u­ing con­flict by Eu­ro-Amer­i­can so­ci­eties against the ad­vances of blacks, browns and oth­er im­mi­grants, we can con­clude that there is much re­sis­tance and op­po­si­tion to the im­mi­grant com­mu­ni­ty.

At the Games, the in­ter­ac­tion be­tween ath­letes from coun­tries and con­ti­nents, the im­mi­grants in­clud­ed, can­not be fault­ed. The over­pow­er­ing Olympic spir­it can be seen even be­tween and amongst ath­letes in fierce and un­yield­ing com­pe­ti­tion against each oth­er.

Whether such warmth of in­ter­ac­tion pen­e­trates the sur­face and lasts be­yond the con­clu­sion of an event is un­cer­tain. An Olympic en­vi­ron­ment dis­si­pates pet­ty squab­bling amongst hu­mans in var­i­ous forms. CLR James said to the ef­fect that the Greeks, who in­vent­ed the Olympic Games, stopped their dai­ly trib­al squab­bling and con­tes­ta­tions with neigh­bours for a pe­ri­od to hold the Games.

The con­flicts were, how­ev­er, re­joined im­me­di­ate­ly the Games came to an end.

Is there a way of util­is­ing the pos­i­tives of im­mi­gra­tion in sport to fos­ter and in­flu­ence the en­hance­ment of qual­i­ty hu­man re­la­tions around the world? We shall con­tin­ue to ex­plore pos­si­bil­i­ties.