Professional sport in the Global South: Rugby, mobility and Fijian sociality

• Applicant: Dr. Dominik Schieder
• Subject Area: Social and Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology
• Term: since 2026
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 568835150

The project examines the nexus of professional rugby, sport-related mobility and indigenous Fijian sociality. In the Pacific Island state of Fiji, rugby is a national game and the most popular leisure activity, pursued by large parts of Fiji’s male indigenous population, increasing numbers of indigenous Fijian women and Fiji Islanders of other ethnic identities. Fiji’s international achievements, such as being a two times Olympic Gold medallist, have put the country on the global rugby map. Moreover, since the professionalization of rugby union in the 1990s, an ever-increasing number, especially of male athletes, have been plying their trade in club rugby competitions in the Global North. Contrary to existing research on Fijian rugby and related outward labour migration, this project approaches Fiji as a distinct location for athletes to remain, return or move to rather than as a place of origin and departure. Based on this perspective, the project explores the sociocultural dynamics related to the hitherto unexamined introduction and development of professional rugby in Fiji. More specifically, it analyses Fijian athletes’ and other Fijians’ (in)direct engagement with the Fijian Drua, Fiji’s first professional rugby franchise, and what consequences this has for families, kinship groups and communities. The project probes into the assumption that, notwithstanding the fact that professional rugby in Fiji creates new avenues of success and income for Fijian athletes and their families, wider kin groups and local communities, it has, at the same time, the potential to cause sociocultural frictions and ambivalences for indigenous Fijians (in)directly involved with the Fijian Drua and how they relate to one another. It starts from the vantage point that, although amateur rugby has gradually been indigenized since its introduction to Fijians in the late 19th century and continues to grow as a source of labor emigration, the current development of professional rugby in Fiji operates within the context of neoliberal sports economies and emerging mobility trajectories and shapes Fijian sociality in various, (un)intended and at times unpredictable ways. In that light the project particularly explores how professional rugby in Fiji intersects with emic concepts, discourses and practices of family, kinship and community. The project is conceptualized as a multi-sited ethnography and predominantly makes use of participant observation, interviews and talanoa ('storytelling'), a distinct form of dialogue widespread in Oceania. Advancing beyond Fiji, the project ponders the broader implications of the Fijian case with respect to the sociocultural consequences of the professionalization of sport and sport labour mobility in the Global South, especially concerning those societies which to date have been considered as being at the supplying, rather than at the receiving end of global sporting industries.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Australia, Fiji
• Cooperation Partners: Dr. Yoko Kanemasu; Dr. Victoria Stead; Professor Dr. Matt Tomlinson