Mega-Event Mobilities

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.

Noel B. Salazar is Research Professor in Anthropology at the University of Leuven, Belgium. Christiane Timmerman is Research Professor at the University of Antwerp and director of the Centre of Migration and Intercultural Studies (CeMIS). Johan Wets is Research Manager Migration of HIVA, University of Leuven, Belgium. Luana Gama Gato is a PhD candidate in anthropology at the University of Leuven. Sarah Van den Broucke is Research Associate at HIVA, University of Leuven. She specialises in international migration and policy research.

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 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