Exploring children's rights: Posthumanist perspectives on recruitment of young boys to a Danish football academy in Uganda.

Abstract

Jeg forlod Danmark i begyndelsen af august 2019 for at undersøge rekrutteringen af unge drenge til et dansk fodboldakademi i Uganda. Mit mål var at blive kritisk involvereret med så mange forskellige mennesker som muligt som var relateret til rekrutteringens processen. Målet var ikke at skulle gengive denne proces, men jeg var i stedet interesseret i at skabe så mange forskellige perspektiver på børns rettigheder når børnene blev rekrutteret. Jeg forsøgte ikke at distancere mig til feltarbejdet. I stedet forsøgte jeg at praktisere en anderledes kritisk og aktivistisk form for etnografi. Jeg opsøgte konfrontationer og diskussioner hos ugandiske og danske trænere, scouts, akademiets medarbejdere og frivillige samt hos den danske direktør. Feltarbejdet, skriveprocessen og projektet generelt var udarbejdet fra en posthumanistisk position som medførte at jeg tog forskellige valg forskelligt i forbindelse med filosofiske og metodiske overvejelser. Jeg forsøgte aktivt at benytte mig af tekst og skrivning som et performativt redskab hvor jeg kunne illustrere kompleksiteten om børns rettigheder og akademiets rekruttering. Jeg levede i Uganda 11 ud af de sidste 18 måneder og jo mere tid jeg var der jo mere kæmpede jeg også med at gøre det kendte ukendt. Mit etnografiske arbejde forårsagede mange forskellige dilemmaer hvor jeg konstant blev mindet om min forestilling om at jeg ville være en ansvarlig forsker. Jeg var i midten af et akademi som rekrutterede drenge helt ned i 7 års alderen. Dette vil for altid være problematisk med børns rettigheder fordi hvad eller hvem er topprioriteten? Er det akademiets visioner om at skabe rollemodeller og professionelle spillere eller er det tanker om at et barn for alt i verden skal være nærmest sin familie? Jeg giver ikke et direkte svar uden også at have illustreret hvor kompliceret dette er, og jo flere aktører der involveres jo mere kompleks. Hvad jeg dog foreslår, er at der er håb og muligheder for en bedre fremtid for børn som er relateret til fodboldakademier. En bedre fremtid hvor ugandiske børn og familier ikke udnyttes af internationale akademier som er tilstede med en dækhistorie om humanisme.

I left Denmark at the beginning of august 2019 to investigate how recruitment of young boys was practised at a Danish football academy in Uganda. I aimed to critically engage with as many people who were related to the recruitment process, not so much to clarify a specific practice, but I was more interested in creating perspectives on children’s rights from a critical ethnographic approach. As an ethnographer, a critical ethnographer, I did not seek to distance myself from my work. I deliberately involved myself as much as possible through an activist style where I did not avoid confrontations or discussions. I tried to do so with Ugandan and Danish academy coaches, scouts, staff members, volunteers and the director of El Cambio Academy. This project departure from a posthumanism position and was inspired by different philosophers mainly Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari who affected me and the project to practise and write research differently. I tried to experiment with styles of writings. I used texts and writing as an active element where new thoughts could evolve. I lived in Uganda the past eleven out of eighteen months, and the more time I was there, the more I experienced the struggle of making the familiar strange. I think my confrontational ethnographic work could be interpreted as some kind of wrestling with things that slowly had become familiar, which I thought forever would be strange to me. This wrestle caused many dilemmas during the fieldwork, where I constantly select my actions because I imagined myself as a responsible researcher. Being in the middle of an academy that recruits boys from they are seven years old will forever be problematic when it is thought with a children’s rights principles - because who or what is the top priority? I do not provide a single answer, because it is far more complicated when many different actors get involved, but what I argue is that there could be a potentially different and better future for children related to academies. A better future where families and children from Uganda no longer are taken advantage of by international football academies who are there with a cover story of humanism.

A master thesis from Aalborg University

Exploring children's rights: Posthumanist perspectives on recruitment of young boys to a Danish football academy in Uganda.