Social structure and the imagined mobility of youth football athletes in Dakar

Abstract Across Dakar are many small football training centres where youth prospects start what could grow into professional careers. At these centres, imaginations of career and social mobility develop. In this paper, I explore the mobility imaginations of the youth athletes. I argue that the imaginations are shaped by existing social and class structures, and that the imaginations among the athletes from poor and working-class backgrounds are predominantly unidimensional. Such imaginations that construct mobility exclusively along a career in football produce barriers to the social mobility that the athletes strive for, thereby, reinforcing the structures of social immobility.