The ‘beautiful game’ and its dilemmas: sports migration, ‘Brazilianness’ and ‘race’

Abstract

The relationship between sports, especially football, Brazilian national identity, and ‘race’, has received considerable attention. The hyper-visibility of football, however, obscures the relationship between Brazilian identity with another sport that was partially ‘invented’ in Brazil: futsal. This paper examines migrant Brazilian football and futsal athletes, through an analysis of their life-histories. The study combines life-histories, a re-construction of long-term historical processes that inform and condition the specificity of Brazilian identity, and media discourses to construct a novel perspective on the relationship between ‘Brazilianness’ and sports.