Abstract
This paper focuses on African migrant mixed martial arts (MMA) fighters enrolled in the Extreme Fighting Championship (EFC), a leading MMA organization established in 2009 in South Africa. It highlights their precarious work and living conditions, which are counterbalanced by the promise of real but rare career possibilities. Drawing from Michel de Certeau’s conceptual framework – notably his concepts of strategies, tactics and lieu propre (proper place) – we analyse what it is to struggle, cope and sometimes thrive, as a migrant fighter in South Africa. We rely on 61 semi-structured interviews with 35 professional EFC fighters from four Sub-Saharan countries who migrated to South Africa. Our results highlight the various tactics – which rely on social networks, their bodily stature, fighting skills and EFC media presence – that fighters mobilize to cope with the hardships of migratory status and unstable work conditions. We thus reveal the dialectic power relations that tie fighters to promoters and contribute to understanding migrants’ work conditions in the neoliberal sports market. Our research highlights the need to move away from migrant athletes’ caricatured representations as silent and passive victims unaware of the mechanisms of oppression to a more dynamic understanding of power relations that takes coping mechanisms and career trajectories into account.
This paper tackles professional sport migration within the rapidly expanding ecosystem of mixed martial arts (MMA), with a particular focus on the dynamics of power relations between elite athletes and their employers. MMA is a synthetic combat sport combining striking and grappling techniques, such as wrestling and Brazilian jiu-jitsu. MMA has gained international renown with the success of the world's largest fight promoter: the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). Through acquisitions of rival promoters, restrictive contracts (preventing fighters from competing in other promotions) and control over compensation, the UFC has been accused of creating a monopoly (control over the market supply) and monopsony (control over the market demand for fighter services) in the MMA industry. These practices seem to have stifled competition, limiting fighters’ career opportunities, and leading to a significant reduction in fighters’ earnings compared to a competitive market (Hamilton, 2022; McClearen, 2021).
Our aim in this paper is to reveal how migrant fighters struggle, cope and sometimes thrive within this neoliberal environment – as defined by Tyler (2020) as a complex, class-driven project aimed at imposing market rules over citizenship, characterized by economic deregulation, welfare state retraction and the emphasis on individual responsibility – with a particular focus on post-apartheid South Africa where economic policies adopted during its early democracy align with core neoliberal principles (Fourie, 2022; Mfete, 2020). To do so, we draw from the work of Michel de Certeau, who theorized power relations by insisting on the agency of dominated individuals (de Certeau, 2002). De Certeau's perspective entices us to move away from migrant athletes’ caricatured representations as silent and passive victims.
In our case, this focus is key to revealing two important processes. First, we highlight the extent to which the promoter's strategies of domination and the migrants’ struggles to survive/succeed are intertwined. There is a dialectic relation between the former's attempts to secure a cheap and submissive workforce and the latter's endeavour to survive within the interstices of domination. Second, we reveal how these power relations evolve when fighters progressively succeed (or fail) in their careers. In other terms, our use of de Certeau leads us away from a static and unidirectional understanding of fighters–promoters’ power relations by highlighting their dynamic and bidirectional reconfigurations. If de Certeau's concepts of strategies, tactics and lieu propre are key to revealing these processes, we end up questioning the limits of his framework in situations where power relations become less entrenched, notably when fighters become more successful.
We focus on the Extreme Fighting Championship (EFC), the leading MMA organization on the African continent. Established in 2009, the EFC has hosted 110 events involving 524 fighters under contract (EFCwordwide, Schedule past and future). Among the latter are 112 African fighters from Sub-Saharan countries, on which our study focuses. Upon their arrival in South Africa, they are confronted with a range of economic, administrative and social challenges, exacerbated by the implementation of neoliberal policies in post-Apartheid South Africa (Fourie, 2022). These policies have significantly fostered inequalities and led to the marginalization and impoverishment of African migrants, stripping them of vital resources and exposing them to the super-exploitation of capital (Hadebe, 2022; Mwipikeni, 2019; Schierup, 2015). As the sole professional MMA promoter in Africa, the EFC exploits its monopolistic position to impose disadvantageous working conditions on these already vulnerable migrant fighters. In our empirical article, we aim to describe how they struggle, cope and sometimes thrive within this challenging MMA market, which is situated within the broader South African neoliberal environment.
These dynamics of oppression observed in the MMA ecosystem (Hamilton, 2022; Singh, 2024) are also prevalent in the global neoliberal sport market (Nauright, 2014; Miller, 2012) and inherent in the production of international sport migration (Carter, 2011). Focusing on the agency of elite athletes, the intertwinement of their struggles with the logics of domination and the evolution of power relations during careers, our paper contributes to understanding migrants’ work conditions in the neoliberal sports market.
In the first part of the paper, we provide an overview of the literature on African sport migration, present our conceptual framework and describe our methodology. We then elaborate our argument as follows: we start by describing the precariousness of migrant fighters’ conditions in South Africa and the media rhetoric of the EFC, two aspects of the domination that fighters experience. We then turn to how migrant fighters resist within that ecosystem. We first focus on the tactics they mobilize outside of the EFC environment before we turn to those they mobilize within the EFC. Doing so, we reveal how migrant fighters survive, and sometimes thrive, within the neoliberal sports market. We conclude by reflecting on the dynamics of fighters–promoters’ power relations and suggesting avenues for further research.
Steering away from alienated individuals: perspectives on sport migration literature
It has long been acknowledged that African sport migration is a result of globalization and transnational commercial circuits (Akindes, 2013; Brewer, 2017; Giulianotti and Robertson, 2012; Lanfranchi and Taylor, 2001; Poli et al., 2010). The significant role of transfer networks, sports agents and training academies has been underscored (Gaudin et al., 2016; Van der Meij and Darby, 2017), often portraying African athletes as primarily driven by financial gain and market dynamics (Chepyator-Thomson and Ariyo, 2016; Eliasson, 2009; Simiyu Njororai, 2012). Acknowledging that the sports labour market is socially embedded in specific situations and local contexts (Carter, 2007), we believe that these perspectives may overlook migrant athletes’ agency because they are portrayed as victims of the neoliberal sports market. Instead, our study concentrates on individual pathways by examining the interactions between local and global power dynamics, all of which are deeply rooted in complex contexts (Besnier, 2015).
We agree with Agergaard and Ungruhe (2016) that precarity is an ontological condition that can be described as a complex state involving active responses to the process of precarization. For example, African migrant soccer players strategically harness their perceived unique African attributes to negotiate higher status when securing contracts with clubs, transforming race stereotypes into competitive advantages (Agergaard and Ungruhe, 2016). Esson's research illustrates how Ghanaian soccer players transform themselves into Foucauldian ‘entrepreneurs of self’ in the pursuit of a professional soccer career (Esson, 2015), which counters the typical narrative of external demand or deceptive agents initiating migration. This proactive stance is highlighted in studies that describe migrant athletes making strategic decisions when negotiating contract terms, demanding higher wages, seeking specific agents or recruiters or joining lower-tier clubs for experience and exposure (Acheampong, 2020; Engh and Agergaard, 2015; Lafabrègue et al., 2013). As described by Cleveland (2013), migrant athletes typically solicited guidance from more experienced players and adapted their migration project to pursue alternative employment or educational opportunities.
Our study aims to contribute to these perspectives that emphasize migrant athletes’ agency in challenging contexts. Most studies focus on the migration of soccer players from Africa to Europe or the United States (Rojo et al., 2022). Intra-African sport migration has only been explored in two studies (Cornelissen and Solberg, 2007; Darby and Solberg, 2010), and there are, to our knowledge, no studies on combat sport migration. More importantly, while most case studies thematize power relations, they offer no theoretical framework to account for power's dual role in oppression and resistance. Our article opens an alternative path to the opposition between oppression and resistance, dominant and dominated, by exploring the few interstices within which the two dynamically interact and reconfigure themselves.
MMA has been characterized as closely linked to neoliberal principles, notably because of its networked, commercial, media-driven and extra-federal model led by private, for-profit companies (fight promoters) that market professional fights (Quidu, 2018). It is acknowledged that in this neoliberal context, masculinity is defined by entrepreneurial individuals who see the market as the highest authority (McClearen, 2023). In that perspective, the gym is a critical environment where fighters create a community through shared suffering (Green, 2011, 2015; Spencer, 2012) and transform their bodies into ‘weapons’ (Spencer, 2009: 139). It has been shown that the intersection of neoliberal and postfeminist influences in MMA shapes gender identities in ways that continue to support gender inequality (Hamilton, 2022). However, scholars rarely highlighted how fighters turn their bodies and their skills into resources that are valued both in the professional MMA economy and beyond. Moreover, to our knowledge, no study has focused on the case of professional migrant fighters (in any combat sport), nor analysed how their precarity defines modes of resistance in the neoliberal sports market.
Conceptualizing precarity: domination and resistance
Our paper is concerned with how people resist power, a theme extensively addressed by Foucault and de Certeau. However, both authors differed in their understanding of resistance (Marks, 1999; van Rosmalen, 2021). As will be explained hereunder, de Certeau focused on the various tactics that people use to survive in an ecosystem of domination, situating resistance outside or at the margins of power (de Certeau, 2002). Foucault, on the other hand was more interested in the way power is exercised (Foucault, 1975, 1963/2012), something that de Certeau has criticized for reifying power and undermining alternative possibilities, or resistances (de Certeau, 1986). However, Foucault addressed resistance later in his career when he inquired ‘technologies of the self’ (Foucault, 1988, 1984). We chose to utilize de Certeau's framework (outlined below) because it is suited to analysing resistances within the contexts of everyday life and interpersonal interactions, and these were central in our empirical data (van Rosmalen, 2021).
Michel de Certeau highlights resistances, those seemingly mundane practices that ‘remain heterogeneous to the systems that they infiltrate and from which they draw the ruses of different interests and desires’ (de Certeau, 2002: 57). These practices are at the same time different from and part of an observed system and ‘are also part of social life, even more resistant because they are more flexible and adjusted to perpetual change’ (de Certeau, 2002: 67). Accordingly, to apply this perspective, we must first describe the relevant field of power. The practices of both oppressor and oppressed are conditioned by their relationship with a system and the power relations defining the networks in which they exist (de Certeau, 2002). In our case, this involves examining the MMA economy in South Africa and the socio-economic conditions of migrant fighters. The constraints and opportunities provided by these factors map the grounds of oppressions and resistances, with actors being both products and producers of their localized power relations (Foucault, 1982).
De Certeau differentiates between strategies and tactics. Strategies are used by dominant actors, while tactics are employed by dominated individuals. What differentiates them is that strategies can create and impose structures, while tactics can only adapt and respond to them (de Certeau, 2002: 51). In other words, the most powerful can impose a frame on the less powerful, who can only react to and within this frame. De Certeau relies on a spatial metaphor to emphasize this dependence of tactics on strategies. According to him, the dominant group's strategies rely on their lieu propre (sometimes translated as proper place), which is not the case for the dominated group. This reflects how the dominants build on resources that allow them to temporarily extract themselves from their environment to generate relations with an ‘exterior’. On the other hand, dominated individuals cannot build on such resources and must exist within others’ spaces to await opportunities: ‘Tactics has for place only that of the other. Also, it must play with the ground, which is imposed to it, a ground organized by the law of a foreign force’ (de Certeau, 2002: 60). Our aim in this paper will be to describe how the EFC produces strategies from its lieu propre and how migrant fighters use tactics to effectively navigate both outside and within EFC's lieu propre.
Neoliberalism is central in our article because, as we will see, it structures the MMA market in South Africa and thus conditions the power relation between fighters and the EFC. Foucault famously described the condition of the neoliberal subject as that of an ‘entrepreneur of the self’ (1979/2008). This highlights the fact that individuals are encouraged to perceive themselves as projects, tasked with maximizing their gains and taking responsibility for losses or successes (Joseph, 2013). Analyses of neoliberal governmentalities have been extended to various dimensions of life (Rose, 1998), notably modern elite sports (Besnier et al., 2020). Interestingly with regards to our analyses, the neoliberal ethos of entrepreneurship, which was originally described as relying on rational maximization of utility has been extended to non-rational behaviours and forms of individual resilience (Dean, 2014; Joseph, 2013). In other terms, neoliberal subjectivities can take the form of rational maximization of profits, but also of concern ‘with our own subjectivity, our adaptability, our reflexive understanding, our own risk assessments, our knowledge acquisition’ (Joseph, 2013: 40). These subjectification processes are varied and sometimes seemingly opposed, however, they all belong to ‘the logic of neoliberal economic growth itself’ (Christiaens, 2020: 507).
Methodology
We started by making an inventory of non-South African fighters under contract to the EFC. Using the personal data available on the EFC's website (EFC, Athletes view profiles) and the fighters’ social networks, we selected fighters who are based and affiliated with a gym in South Africa and contacted them on social media. The sample is composed of male migrant fighters (N = 35) from Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Angola, Nigeria and Zimbabwe, all professional fighters contracted by the EFC. We conducted semi-structured interviews (N = 61) covering six main themes: (1) MMA discovery and sport career in home country, (2) migratory project (organization, migratory network and journey), (3) organization and living conditions in South Africa (MMA practice conditions, amateur career, legal status, menial jobs, sociability and solidarity networks), (4) professional career at the EFC, (5) relationship to home country and (6) future projects. We chose semi-structured interviews for they entail the opportunity to co-produce knowledge within dialogues and provide the flexibility to delve more deeply into topics the interviewee considers significant (Brinkmann, 2020).
Data were gathered during the COVID-19 pandemic – from April 2020 to November 2021 – and the interviews were conducted online. Each lasted one hour on average. Oral consent to record the interviews, anonymize them and use the data was obtained from each participant. We conducted an initial series of exploratory interviews, from which themes of precarity and resistance emerged. To further investigate these topics, we proceeded with a second and, when appropriate, a third round of interviews. The collected data were coded with MAXQDA software following the principles of grounded theory (Corbin and Strauss, 1990). An open coding phase, which was conducted sentence-by-sentence, led to the identification of 140 codes. The collaborative axial coding phase led to the identification of the various means by which fighters resist their condition (i.e. working as bouncers, leveraging their physical stature and martial arts skills for employment, capitalizing on their notoriety from the EFC to enhance their job market value, using the EFC as a platform for visibility, etc.). It was clear that some of these means were directly related to the EFC, while others were not. It was also clear that fighters were acutely aware of these power dynamics. The emergence of these related themes prompted us to analyse resistance using de Certeau's framework, which we delve into in the remainder of the article.
To ensure the best possible restitution of the fighters’ verbatims, the pseudonyms used in the article were chosen by the fighters themselves – with the instruction to pick a nickname that wouldn’t let anyone recognize them – and we sent the sections about them back to the fighters for review. The fighters named in the article are not part of our sample. In addition, we gathered EFC's advertising material to explore the discursive aspect of domination.
Results
Double domination: being a migrant and a fighter
The interviewed fighters began their journey in combat sports during childhood. They all have pursued professional careers in combat sports in their home country and competed at the national level, with some achieving the status of elite athletes by representing their countries internationally. Despite their dedication, the instability of their career remained a significant challenge. The scarcity of professional opportunities, coupled with the aspiration for international exposure, marked the beginning of their migration project. South Africa emerged as a preferred destination for three main reasons: (a) its geographic proximity and frequent transport routes through Zambia and Zimbabwe (particularly beneficial for Congolese and Zimbabweans), (b) accounts from family or friends who have previously migrated to South Africa and have achieved financial stability and (c) the supportive presence of family or former training partners.
When arriving in South Africa, the fighters encounter numerous challenges in meeting their basic needs, such as housing, food and employment. Their situation is characterized by a lack of savings, scarce income sources, minimal professional training outside of combat sports and restricted English proficiency. However, some fighters possess social capital in the form of pre-existing connections within South Africa, which can aid in improving their living conditions and furthering their sports careers. Securing housing that is both affordable, safe and in proximity to the gym presents a challenge, as only select areas in Pretoria, Johannesburg and Cape Town offer low rent and protection against xenophobic attacks (Hayem, 2013; Landau, 2011; Misago, 2016; Musariri, 2022; Wa Kabwe-Segatti, 2008). Finally, migrant fighters possess temporary asylum permits that grant them a limited stay in the country. This type of administrative insecurity fosters temporary employment and persistent instability (Ali, 2010; Goldring and Landolt, 2013; Jinnah, 2020). Mpakasa's account exemplifies these challenges, enduring significant hardships, including working night shifts with minimal rest, lack of support and sponsorship and living in a garage for three years: Life was hard, you work all night and you’re supposed to train in the morning. I used to do this from 8 pm to 4 am and you leave at 7 am, it wasn’t easy, you’re not considered, you have no support, you have no sponsors, you have nothing, you only have yourself. […] I suffered in South Africa, I suffered, I slept in a garage, the place where you put the cars. But it was cheaper than the others. I spent 3 years in a garage, 3 years. No windows, no doors. (Mpakasa, 15 March 2021)
All interviewed fighters explained that the EFC salary is insufficient to support themselves and their family. Furthermore, they highlight the financial challenges of MMA and the discrepancy between the time and resources necessary to prepare for a fight: You fight like two, three times a year at most, and that's once every four months. But, all this time, you are training, you are doing this and that and everything you do requires money. You must pay coaches here. You must pay for transport, for food, for everything. All these expenses, and the amount you get from the fight is not enough to cover this. (Hector, 9 February 2023)
Another fighter, Benjamin, points out an increase in fighters accepting low pay when joining the EFC, resulting in what he calls an ‘inflation of fighters’. He underscores that the EFC's MMA monopoly on the continent contributes to the devaluation of fighters. The success of a fighter's career is contingent on their relationship with the EFC, and they must accept the EFC's terms or risk getting fired and losing crucial media exposure. When negotiating their contracts, migrant fighters weigh their options but generally accept unfavourable conditions because they are limited to inexistent bargaining power: The EFC is a private company; it's people who decide, who say, ‘OK, we pay you that much’, and it's ‘take it or leave it’. Especially since there are a lot of fighters, so you don’t have a choice. So, the first proposal that you get, you don’t have a choice; you take it because you need to be on TV and that way, you may have some sponsors who will give you some money here and there, and you need that. (Benjamin, 22 July 2020) Sometimes, the EFC checks your situation. Let's say you’re Congolese, you’re a security guard, they know your history, they check. If another kid who's white and maybe from a good family has come to fight, if they say to that kid, ‘we’re going to give you 2,000 rand if you fight, 2,000 rand if you win’, the guy's going to be like ‘what?’, because he's grown up with more. But the Congolese security guard, the EFC knows he doesn’t make anything in a month, so he’ll say ‘okay, I accept’, you know what I mean? I think they’re very good at seeing your situation, what kind of person you are and what your needs are. (Erick, 19 May 2022)
The discursive aspect of domination: EFC's meritocratic discourse
The relationship between the EFC and its fighters is asymmetrical, with the EFC imposing its economic and administrative will on workers (Castells, 2016). As we have described, this – in typical neoliberal fashion – occurs by both being fuelled by and producing hardship. However, power is also exercised by producing (or reinforcing/transforming) cultural beliefs (Castells, 2016). In the case of the EFC and migrant fighters, a meritocratic ideology that assumes inborn talent and a competitive, hierarchical system is at the centre of the work/power relation (Littler, 2013).
The EFC's advertising material, particularly fight promotion videos featuring migrant fighters like Zimbabwe's Themba Gorimbo (EFCworldwide, 2015), Angola's Bernardo Mikixi (EFCworldwide, 2013a, 2013b) and Demarte Pena (EFCworldwide, 2013a, 2013b), embody a meritocratic ideology. These title contenders’ stories – Gorimbo's work in diamond mines and illegal border crossing, Mikixi's history of child abuse and street fighting, Pena's experiences of war and the loss of his mother when he was young – highlight their journey to EFC championship status. These narratives draw from two common meritocratic themes: (a) one must suffer to succeed/suffering is rewarded by success and (b) success is open to anyone. Their journey as migrants overcoming complex power dynamics to achieve victory, emphasized with dramatic tones and imagery, resonates with the neoliberal emphasis on merit and success, exploiting themes of adversity leading to success and equal opportunities for all. In the videos, their pasts – notably their migrations – are showcased as a testament to the career possibilities within the EFC, illustrating the purported organization's commitment to nurturing talent, regardless of socio-economic background. These videos showcase a narrative reminiscent of Francis Ngannou, a Cameroonian-born UFC champion, whose migration background and rise to fame are continuously leveraged by media and Ngannou himself. This pattern reinforces a common cultural thread that associates hardship with success, or, in other words, a belief in meritocratic processes (Littler, 2013). As they say, there are no roses without thorns. I made my career without a sponsor. You have to be determined, rely on no one. (…) I want to tell our young brothers to count on themselves, to count on working hard, to work hard, to have a clear goal. To work hard and have an objective, not to be discouraged. Not to rely on sponsors, to be determined, motivated by hard work. Hard work will pay off later, sooner or later. (Mpakasa, 18 June 2020)
According to the classical view of domination, this process is beneficial to the EFC and detrimental to the migrant fighters. It is likely to push fighters to accept harsh conditions in the belief that this will produce rewards. If a fighter succeeds, he can be turned into a marketing-efficient narrative, which will then reinforce the belief among other fighters. In the case of any fighter who fails to become a champion (i.e. the large majority), this discourse is also beneficial to the EFC because it provides a low-cost and highly motivated workforce. Moreover, it suggests that failure was due to a lack of individual will to accept suffering and draws attention away from more systemic factors. Accordingly, we may hypothesize that the EFC has an interest in maintaining the belief that migrant fighters’ hardships are eventually rewarded. This allows the EFC to solidify its lieu propre by presenting itself as a fair opportunity and legitimizes the sufferings of migrant fighters.
Building resources ‘outside’ the EFC's lieu propre
We have shown how the resources of the EFC and the lack of resources of the fighters produce an asymmetrical situation in which the later are bound to wait for opportunities within the former's lieu propre, a situation legitimized by prevalent meritocratic discourses. We will now turn to migrant fighters’ ways of resisting within this unfavourable context, or, in de Certeau's words, their tactics. The question at hand is how migrant fighters survive in a context characterized by asymmetrical relations, instability and justified by meritocratic discourses.
The payment provided by the EFC is insufficient, causing migrant fighters to pursue secondary work alongside their MMA career. Some fighters mobilize their cultural resources to secure jobs connected to their MMA training, such as coaching or personal training. At first, it paid a little, but now, the fighting sucks in South Africa, so, if you’re doing fights, it's like doing almost nothing. So, it would be better to do something that… even a personal trainer is better than a fighter. So, as I give personal training like that in South Africa, I earn more than when I was fighting in the EFC. (Benjamin, 17 August 2020) I also started to develop my body and at one point I was given the job of bouncer, I stopped the carguard, the carwatch. As I had also developed my body, I began to have real connections there, I remember for example in 2010 when there was the World Cup here, I had the chance to work with many stars here, yeah to be a bodyguard. (Kendi, 20 April 2022)
Building resources ‘within’ the EFC's lieu propre
The EFC broadcasts its fights in approximately 120 countries over 5 continents on 15 TV channels and streaming platforms. The EFC regularly posts content on Facebook (2.9 million subscribers), Instagram (49,000 subscribers) and X (29,700 subscribers) and awards financial bonuses to fighters who contribute to its visibility by being active on social media. Our results indicate that migrant fighters take advantage of this visibility to be noticed by other international promoters: I’m telling you, brother, we use their media opportunities. People who are educated, we use media opportunities to be seen outside. As soon as you get that opportunity, you change places. (Pomba, 25 March 2021) So, I think EFC is just for visibility, and I would like most of the fighters in the EFC to be able to see the same way I do, and it will make it easier for them to continue their career without putting stress in their head about payment and everything. But personally, if I must be sincere with you, I already thank the EFC for having made me visible throughout the world, let's say throughout Africa, and that is more than money for me. It can bring me more; it can help me to reach another level. (Jean, 3 December 2020)
Via their media coverage on social networks and the wide distribution of the EFC's fights on TV and streaming platforms, EFC fighters acquire a certain notoriety, especially in South Africa. This notoriety also extends their social capital, which according to fighters can lead to novel job opportunities, clients, training partners and financial support (i.e. sponsors covering fight preparation costs like training equipment and dietary needs): I was also teaching kids at the gym and getting a salary from the gym, and I think this is where a lot of fighters manage to find money. You coach people, you train people, and it helps when they see you on TV and if you are doing well and you win. They feel they are training with the champion. That's why a lot of guys, when they want to leverage this, even if the EFC doesn’t really pay you enough to be able to survive, it gives you a platform for people to know you, since you have sold yourself as a brand. (Erick, 9 July 2020) The condition is that now I’m a trainer; I have students, private students, who are paying me for my time. So, when I go to fight, I’m going to take some time, for training, for weighing and all that. All of that must be taken into consideration, so I have to get paid for it. There was a time when I was not at the top, well known, but I had nothing in my pocket. But I didn’t think too much about that at that time, and now we talk business. Not every athlete can have the conditions that I do, because there are many who are where I was. There are many who still want to be known; there are many who still want even a little bit of nothing from the EFC. So, they take advantage of them. (Benjamin, 19 March 2021)
We may now briefly return to Gorimbo, Mikixi and Pena's videos. We previously analysed their potential effects from the perspective of the EFC and their role in reinforcing fighters’ acceptance of harsh working conditions. However, considering the preceding results, we can review it from the point of view of Gorimbo, Mikixi and Pena. The videos are not solely a product of the EFC. They are the coproduction of the EFC and the fighters. After all, fighters are the ones talking, and about themselves. For them, the videos have the potential to ‘raise their stock’ among MMA fans, organizations and fighters. Basically, if the videos are convincing and compel audiences to care about them, this may reinforce fighters’ chances of success in the fighting economy (and beyond if they find ways to translate their success there).
By instantiating the hardships they have faced in the EFC's video, migrant fighters find a way to tactically benefit from a strategy. They use a location inside the EFC's lieu propre to create their own lieu. Here, some limitations of de Certeau's framework become clear; it is difficult to determine whether a tactic occurs within a strategy or whether a strategy internally invades a tactic. The promoter uses migrant fighter's history to produce hardships and financial gain while the fighters use the EFC media presence to gain notoriety. At that time, these three fighters have already gained notoriety and can build on a broader set of resources. It seems as if de Certeau's theory is more efficient in analysing situations of power imbalances than situations – like this one – where the power shifts hand or is redistributed. In migrant fighters’ cases, strategies and tactics dialectically nourish one another and become difficult to disentangle, notably because the power imbalance is being redefined.
Discussion and conclusion
Our results reveal the harsh living conditions of African migrant MMA fighters in South Africa. These conditions are byproducts of both their migratory status and their working conditions, which entail strenuous work and unfavourable contractual terms. As we have seen, belief in meritocratic values is central to the experiences of fighters as it allows them to cope with hardships and hope for a better future.
Discourses around meritocracy can be staged and manipulated, with literature noting that an emphasis on meritocratic values may serve as a means for organizations to mask economic and social inequalities. Indeed, in an unequal environment, the staging of upward mobility can provide ‘publicly visible opportunities to escape an otherwise entrenched position of social subordination’ (Littler, 2013: 55). In other words, meritocracy as a performative discourse can be deemed a tool for maintaining domination or, more accurately, a means of making the injustices and hardships produced by domination more bearable.
In our context, meritocratic discourses appear to play this specific role. For the EFC, they facilitate the imposition of abusive contractual conditions, especially on migrant fighters. The experience of harsh life conditions entangles itself with publicly available discourses and produces a structure of domination that provides the EFC with a cheap and submissive workforce. However, our interviews complicate the picture. They underscore the resilience of fighters and their ability to cope with this situation, even to profit from it. Certainly, the EFC has power over migrant fighters. However, this system is an imbrication of tactics and strategies where margins for manoeuvring exist for the dominated. As we have seen, fighters find elaborate ways to deal with their difficult position within this field of power. In Gorimbo, Mikixi and Pena's case, the interweaving of strategy and tactic becomes hard to disentangle, as their videos are a junction where tactics and strategies collide through a staging of meritocracy, where promoter and fighter seem to benefit from each other.
While strategy largely trumps tactics in the case of lesser-known fighters, tactics seem to ‘catch up’ with strategy as fighters gain notoriety. Obviously, such fighters are still moving in the margins of the strategy. However, if they don’t have a lieu propre at the beginning of their careers, they seem to progressively move along a continuum that opposes place to non-place and incrementally build a lieu propre as an ‘EFC migrant fighter’. This effectively shows dynamism in the apparent fixity of de Certeau's frame. In other words, the position and trajectory of fighters inside the EFC's structure – the career path – partly determine their ability to exploit EFC's lieu propre.
This is exemplified by fighters’ possibility to build on the EFC's renown to access certain jobs and to draw on the meritocratic discourse of ‘elected’ fighters to stage themselves. In the case of a fighter with a mitigated fight record and little notoriety, meritocratic discourses remain a mere means to cope with adversity to justify abusive working conditions. In the case of a more successful fighter, meritocratic discourses become a way to ‘self-charismatize’ (Agergaard and Ungruhe, 2016: 73), to create capital in the form of a narration of the self.
Each position on this continuum enables varying tactics that are more or less close (if we use de Certeau's spatial vocabulary) to the EFC's lieu propre. Thus, a migrant fighter's career can be considered a progressive establishment of a lieu propre or a progressive acquisition of the ability to draw from another lieu propre, specifically, a promoter's. In that perspective, de Certeau's theory is key to progressing beyond the view of the dominated as passive and alienated, but it can also – provided that the concepts of strategy, tactic and lieu propre are perceived as dynamic and intertwined – help us describe the constant and progressive reconfiguration of power relations in a given context.
Our research suggests the following avenues for further research. First, our study focused primarily on male fighters, but there are currently seven migrant women fighters under contract with the EFC. Their experiences may differ from their male counterparts due to gender dynamics, both within the MMA ecosystem and as a result of being migrant African women living in South Africa (Channon et al., 2018; Chinyakata et al., 2019; Hamilton, 2022; Jakubowska et al., 2016; Zinatsa and Saurombe, 2022). Future research should examine the specificities of female MMA fighters’ migration experiences and the challenges they face in this industry. Second, our findings illustrate how certain promoters serve as platforms for increased visibility. Future research should explore the participation of African fighters in amateur MMA competitions, specifically those organized by the International Mixed Martial Arts Federation (IMMAF). Investigating their trajectories could shed light on alternative pathways for building a record and advancing to professional promotions. Third, it is essential to investigate the discursive aspect of domination. Indeed, delving deeper into the role of media – which actively construct and fix dominant meanings within society, thereby sustaining the authority of the dominant group (Carrington, 2010; Hall, 1997) – will be crucial in understanding how EFC's media contributes to the racialization process of migrant fighters and how these elements intersect and shape the experiences of migrant athletes. By examining these areas, researchers can gain a more comprehensive understanding of the experiences and challenges faced by migrant athletes in the neoliberal sport market.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The authors are extremely thankful to all the study participants for their precious help and for sharing their unique stories.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
