Dynamics of commercial running in kenya

This thesis set out to investigate Kenyan long-distance running from the perspective of third-world development. It identifies dependency in the international labor market for runners, and asks the question “how do we explain this dependency?”. To answer this, I hypothesized that actors in the movement have rational incentives to make athletics a market, to act in almost complete self-interest, and to avoid regulation that is already poor. Secondly, I hypothesized that dependency occurs here due to the transnationalizing of a historically informal economy. Finally, I hypothesize that the odd characterization of migrating runners as both skilled and unskilled workers creates trouble in responsibly formalizing the market for athletes.

The methodology used in this study began with unstructured interviews, a survey, and one month of participant observation. In re-examining the issues at hand, another round of interviews and participant observation became necessary—this time the interviews were semi-structured and filmed. Finally, in reviewing interview tapes and B-roll footage, I used qualitative interview, discourse, and content analysis in order to structure my findings into a 60-minute documentary.

It was found that most runners in Kenya are indeed dependent. In fact, most runners are also unsuccessful. The payoffs intrinsic to becoming a world-class athlete make it rational for surplus runners to run professionally, especially considering the alternative career options in rural western Kenya. Even so, the recruitment process for Kenyan runners is inefficient, contentious, and marred by dirty practices on both the demand side and the supply side of the market. The international labor market, along with the Athletics Kenya (the national governing body) is in dire need of revision and modification. With that said, even now the sport of athletics is more important to Kenya than it is harmful.

My sincere gratitude to the following people without whom this would not have been possible:

I am humbled by you all.

Chapter One . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7

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  Introduction
  
• 
  Key Terms
  
• 
  Research Question
  
• 
  Literature Review
  
• 
  Hypothesis & Observable Implications
  
• 
  Case Selection
  
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  Why care
  
• 
  Limitations
  
• 
  Data & Methods
  
• 
  Proposed Thesis Structure
  

• 
  Introduction
  
• 
  Background
  
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  Global Sport in the Global South
  
• 
  Looking Ahead
  

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  Introduction
  
• 
  Eldoret – A Rural Agricultural Setting
  
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  Excavation of Running as a Resource
  
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  Money Decisions
  
• 
  Conclusion
  

Attached: Documentary Feature

Kenyan prowess in long-distance running (otherwise known as athletics in Kenya) was discovered in the later 1960’s with the shocking performances by Olympic medalist Kipchoge Keino; strengthened in the 1970’s with world record performances by Henry Rono; and confirmed and substantiated in the 1980’s with multiple Boston marathon wins by Ibrahim Hussein. Ever since these breakthrough performances, Kenyans have dominated international athletics in cross-country, trail-racing, road-racing, and track-and-field (any distance above the 800 meter run). In fact, seventy-five percent of all top international finishes by Kenyan athletes are won by members of one ethnic tribe (there are forty-two in total)—the Kalenjin. These Kalenjin runners, most of whom hail from rural western Kenya, join the Ethiopians, Moroccans, and a few Ugandans in an exclusive corps of unmatched talent. These runners can be labeled the superstars of their realm.

Because of this very local athletic phenomenon, star Kenyan runners have a chance to win both fame and fortune on the world stage. Even though the spectator’s appeal for long-distance running pales in comparison to professional soccer or basketball, the last few decades have shown a well-developed market—including demand to meet the supply of fast-moving legs. Kenyan running aptitude can surely be looked at as a comparative advantage, and their performances are true commodities. Race winnings, lucrative corporate sponsorships, and special performance incentives (time bonuses, etc.) wait to reward international athletic success, giving runners in the Third World a chance to pull themselves and their communities out of poverty. But are large sums of cash an incontrovertible good for the average Kenyan runner, and how much of this money finds its way to the outstretched arms of those families and communities that need it. Do winnings with the purchasing power to transform socioeconomic communities actually do so, and how would we understand any alternative?

Defining Key Terms

My thesis examines the position runners hold within the international labor market, specifically with respect to sport. In order to have a complete discussion, I must be upfront in explicating key terms. The international labor market for sport (or athletics) is simply a traditional market, once known for goods, then extended to services and labor. As the world has globalized, an international market now involves migration, and even further migration of athletes offering their services abroad. International sport is basically sports that garner awareness from multiple if not all world countries and thus also benefit financially from this global awareness. Most of the time more international sports feature athletes that routinely travel abroad to compete. Football and athletics fit this description, whereas American basketball does to a much lesser amount. Athletics is an achievement sport, which means the central focus is on the ability of an athlete to do one thing well—individually. Commercial athletics in Kenya refers to athletes who are competing principally for financial gains, as opposed to alternatives such as becoming a scholar-athlete in the United States or competing only for national pride (i.e. medals). Finally, dealers, agents, and managers all refer to, generally, a professional that organizes logistics for athletes and, specifically, European or American managers that recruit athletes from a supply in Kenya for a demand in the Global North. They do so in exchange for a variety of financial benefits.

1. 
   What explains the continuing dependence of the Kenyan long-distance running camps on the dealers (sports agents/managers) located in athletics markets of the Global North? What are the mechanisms through which this system is reproduced and perpetuated?
   
2. 
   Taking into account what we know from the systemic mechanisms in question one, what are the prospects and possibilities for the long-term viability of the Kenyan athletics project? How can we improve upon the imperfections in this international labor market for runners?
   
3. 
   What can we as scholars glean from this case study in order to inform our theoretical and practical knowledge about (a) skilled labor migration and (b) formal-informal economic interaction?
   

My thesis, distilled into these research questions (above), addresses dependency in sport. As dependency is a hefty body of scholarly thought, it was never wise to apply its conclusions to such an exceptional entity and concept as sport—at least not initially. Part of the reason why is because sport itself is neither a precise case study nor a united theory. Using my case study in rural western Kenya, outlined in Chapters 2 and 3, I have restricted my subject matter to international sport—that is, sporting events that routinely see athletes competing outside of their native country. To specify further, I am concerned with those athletes who travel abroad to make a living. Finally, Vladimir Andreff delineates “sport” into (1) achievement sport, (2) folk games, and (3) discipline sports*¹, the former-most on which I will focus my efforts.

Thus I have delved into literature speaking to issues in sport and not development, not intent on deducing some connection between the two or operationalizing the claims of dependency theorists (with respect to sport). Rather I have spent time immersed in my case study to identify key economic, political, and social mechanisms—many of which are observed implications that lend directly to my research question. This theoretical induction is also carried out in my consulted literature, which cites numerous existing theories that apply to different sports studies around the globe and that lend directly to my hypotheses.

To be clear, beginning with my case study, I have found a “dependency” by description and not by scholarly diagnosis. One can be dependent on a legal guardian without being on the “periphery” and at the whims of globalization, and my observations are of this nature. In my literature review I look for dependency similar to that of Kenyan runners and examine the theory that conjectures a relevant explanation. With this approach I was able to carefully throw out traditional sports literature about “the sporting experience” (psychological accounts)², sport with respect to firm economics (particularly microeconomics)³, and sport as a holistic business (including sportswear, licensing, and league discussions)⁴. Instead most if not all data regarding international athletes and their dependency dealt with global migration. Professor Marc Lavoie insists that we have an outdated view on athletic markets and speaks of the “new economics of sport”⁵ that combines economics with socio-cultural and political arguments. Within Development Studies, this is a versatile way to describe dependency—thus I will be examining my case from the perspective of dependent development and migration in a global context.

I found and traced three strands of literature that pertain to dependency in global sports migration. All three could be considered established modes of thinking as well as strands, and each in sequence represents another progression in historical thought. The first strand is the fundamental approach of neoclassical economics, which serves as the main explanatory vehicle in looking at the market for runners; in fact, the strand’s deficiencies are particularly helpful. Building and on these recognized shortcomings is globalization theory and its derivatives, world-systems theory and dependency theory. These modes of thought put into operation the more litigious premises about why Kenyan athletes are dependent. Finally, the body of literature falling under the title “migration theory” encompasses the third strand. I have chosen parts of migration theory that tend to (a) contextualize and (b) illustrate the flows of globalization in terms of local nodes of such flows. All strands complement each other in this thesis about global migration, but each successive strand builds on part of the previous strand—leaving migration theory as the most nuanced, illustrative model for my research question.

Neoclassical Economics:

World competition in road racing, cross country, and track & field constitutes a cultural, socio-political, and economic affair. For all intents and purposes in this thesis, Kenyan running competitions (and related interactions) will be inspected in the context of a market. Edited by Wladimir Andreff and Stefan Szymanski, the Handbook on the Economics of Sport⁶ best surveys all aspects of sport through a purely economic lens.

Kenyan long-distance runners do not compete to become famous, per se—they run to win their life’s fortune. Fame is sought after, but only to the extent of its connection with riches. They receive financial reward for the rare service/product they provide—a practice first known as “neoclassical economics”⁷ and taking the form of compensation or remuneration. Although forces of globalization and migration trace how sportspersons may physically participate in international labor migration and in internationally-televised events, no other process can fully explain why this specific career can land an immense load of cash in a rural athlete’s lap. Neoclassical economics is the other side of the coin. Three universally-recognized tenets of neoclassical economics are (1) people/consumers have preferences based on value, (2) provision matches preferences to maximize individual utility and firm profit, and (3) people “act independently on the basis of full and relevant information”. The laws of supply and demand are gleaned from these three tenets in the idea of a market where people can satisfy their needs—markets clear in a self-regulating way⁸.

Sport in sub-Saharan Africa did not always constitute a market: traditionally, sport was generally looked at as a noncompetitive cultural affair⁹, and throughout the establishment of colonial imperialism, sport served as a way to corroborate Social Darwinism and white, European athletic supremacy (e.g. rugby in South Africa)¹⁰. Only in the mid-20^th century did sports become a market in the neoclassical sense. Today, there is a true economic market for competitive Kenyan runners, institutionalized by formal contracts when money changes hands. Most of what we see in this market for runners is explained by neoclassical economics—consumers seeking a product, producers supplying to optimize their profit, and the supplementary line of thought called “comparative advantage”¹¹. However, this true market is neither perfect nor without externalities. In fact, these imperfections will be one of the main foci of this thesis.

Demand Inspected

Existing literature teases out how the idea of comparative advantage might work in athletics¹², illustrating supply-and-demand. As Marc Lavoie lays out, country advantage could derive from or correlate with numerous factors such as financial incentives for native athletes, gross population, GDP per capita figures, or even whether the country was a former soviet bloc state¹³ (related to “financial incentives”, would boost advantage). However, sports focused on exceptional skills such as Kenyan endurance ability, Dominican precision and finesse (in baseball), and West African explosive speed and athleticism (in football) tend to find comparative advantage regardless of these factors. The more incomparable the trait, the less time, money, effort needed to foster that trait, the more futile it becomes to cultivate the trait in the “non-gifted”. Whereas athleticism in West Africa finds perfect substitutes¹⁴ in South America and Spain, Dominican technique is more highly sought after, with only a few American and Japanese players being able to replicate their talent. Only the best Ethiopians stand a chance against Kenyans in distances over the one-mile, so you will see innate ability being the dominant factor in their comparative advantage. Thus, consumer [choice] theory¹⁵ best explains the demand to see world record performances, tactical races to win gold medals, and Ethiopian-Kenyan duals in the marathon.

Also, the income effect states the obvious: that spectators, the ultimate demanders along with sponsors and event managers, pay for more services (or more of a service) when they earn more income—the best way to explain why lucrative racing takes place outside of Kenya. Jean-Jacques Gouguet elaborates on a sport-specific substitution effect, citing how athletic events are in effect selling (1) uncertainty, (2) partisanship, and (3) complementary products¹⁶. Although the American consumer is particularly fickle in wanting to “support a side” (any side really) and tends to be primed today to buy excess sport-related merchandise, international running almost exclusively plays to the former-most intangible, non-durable, public commodity. Since the American jogging craze that emerged in the late 1960’s¹⁷, there is an inordinately-large consumer base hungry to watch the sub-four-minute miles that are the extreme in their hobby and passion. “Impossible physical feats” are the uncertainty that has in fact become “certain” on 21^st-century television.

Supply Inspected

The appeal for the longer running distances is evidenced by the nearly $1 million distributed to those who place in the Boston, New York, and Dubai marathons¹⁸--more than at any other distance. Even in track and field, long-distance events approach and sometimes surpass the payoffs for the sprinters¹⁹, who have phenomenal speed that is both a substitute good in focus-time and a complementary good in “tune-in” hours for spectators or TV-viewers. After fleshing out this demand, only a few neoclassical scholars spend time examining supply as it might be featured in my case study and research questions. In the “professional circus” that is international running²⁰, the metaphorical “peanuts” must be there to enhance the supply of the attraction. First of all, Michael Bolt addresses the “quality” of supply—the first indicator of marginal productivity of running labor*²¹; he cites the extremely low amount of physical and human capital invested to improve the quality of the athletes and their training. Especially throughout East Africa, he suggests a regional funding bloc that agrees beforehand to fund the most promising athletes—cutting down on extra supply while making each “unit” more valuable. This is one of the most useful prescriptions (for dependency within international athletic labor migration) to come out of the neoclassical camp.

Both Vladimir Andreff and Marc Lavoie take this suggestion to show how “quantity” of supply is more illustrative of dependency in sport. Lavoie uses labor economics to describe supply of athletes to the “first buyer”, with hired “players” earning salaries commensurate with their marginal revenue product²². He ties this idea in with those in firm economics, where firm managers make decisions based on revenue elasticity but also have to contend with collective bargaining and rules initiated for labor. As Andreff is quick to point out, there is little or no bargaining room (i.e. in the form of reserve clauses*, salary guarantees, formal talent drafts) for those competing in obscure performance sports, so supply-side behavior tends to adopt practices found in tournament theory instead²³. Based on Gini-coefficients that index “degree of competition”, one can tentatively predict time and effort spent training; in fact, men have a more homogenous spreads in performance and consequently train more intensely to come out on top.

Useful Shortcomings

As one might guess, there are no paid “benchwarmers” in Kenyan athletics; but there are thousands of unpaid benchwarmers. This fact has advised the predominating observed implications that led to my question about dependency: that the “going-price” for Kenyan athletes is in general unresponsive to qualitative and quantitative changes in demand. The number of athletes recruited changes based on individual actors in certain localities, but as a whole this figure is stationary as well. Therefore, money changes hands and markets clear, but not in a way predicted by neoclassical economics²⁴. The international labor market for runners, having a surplus in supply willing to work for a little less and a buyer that adjusts neither the price nor the quantity demanded, does not have normal equilibrium prices or wages. So whereas much about the superstructure in athletics can be portrayed through supply-and-demand, the deficiencies in neoclassical thought are perhaps most illustrative.

To be clear, these drawbacks are the issues that directly pertain to my research question, and neoclassical language is critical to establish in discussing its shortcomings. Neoclassical economic critiques are acknowledged first by its proponents. Already mentioned has been the possibility for irrational choice depending on the market²⁵, as these runners seem to be in a position of “non-cooperative Nash equilibrium”²⁶ where specific deals are infrequently and conditionally on the table. Furthermore, a second pitfall of neoclassical economics is as follows: even with television, “full and relevant” information does not exist for consumers who can’t differentiate between the credentials and the many similar “outlandish” names of Kenyan athletes, or for illiterate Kenyan youth who are not aware of “common market knowledge” in the commercial sport sphere—Joseph Stiglitz calls this an “information asymmetry”²⁷. Information asymmetry becomes problematic when markets cannot clear and transactions are not made—mostly due to skepticism (or ignorance) about a product or buyer (in this case, the Kenyan athlete and the racing agents, respectively).

In transnational contexts involving global migration, information asymmetry of this kind would be considered likely, and rational choice is a construct developed by western neoclassical theory that definitely cannot hold sway in cross-cultural settings. For example, supply-side relations in rural Kenya (in athletics and other arenas) put relatively more emphasis on reciprocity than in similar settings in the United States, as George Akerlof’s gift exchange theory²⁸ suggests. In this way, deficiencies in neoclassical economic theory are acknowledged shortcomings and not burning critiques. In fact, the shortcomings are one possible answer to my research question—implying irrational choice, information asymmetry, and the impossibility of such a “normative” outcome, dependency finds bedrock here. Neoclassical economics and pitfalls, as such, presents a lens through which to examine sport (with varying degrees of efficacy) and to investigate the prospect for dependency. This approach falls short in failing to properly identify dependency.

Where the realm of neoclassical economics stops, globalization picks up in addressing my first and most important research question about dependency in sport. The term “globalization” was co-opted in the 1960’s to describe a world with the tremendously increased economic, political, and social integration²⁹, and it exists today as prevalent approach in development studies. In his collection of articles entitled Sports and Globalization: Handbook of Sports Studies, Joseph Maguire encapsulates a strand of literature applying globalization to modern sport, introducing most scholars who have helped to identify global dependency in sport.

Globalization describes the ever-growing integration of national economies, especially with regard to capital flows, investment, technology, labor, and investment. Before he equates “national economies” with “sports economies”, Maguire demonstrates how economic flows are quickly followed by global flows of leisure, customs, and practice³⁰. After the English colonized India alongside its prospering spice trade, well-to-do Indians were soon drinking English tea; similarly, many Western sports (especially English) were picked up by colonized countries—for instance, football in Western African nations like the Ivory Coast and Ghana, or baseball in Central American countries like the Dominican Republic. The former is an example of embracing a foreign cultural concept and the latter was the result of coercive pressure from foreign military servicemen. In her research, Trudo Dejonghe presents a coding scheme and adaptable chart for the assimilation of foreign sports culture, e.g. contending that most former colonial states in sub-Saharan saw a “total passive resistance” of sporting practices and governing structures³¹.

Diffusion and translation, two other broad, related modes of thought, also advance ways to view the speed, degree, and fashion in which societies accept new ideas. However, Kenyan athletics arose after Kenyan independence in steady correspondence with the rising rewards for global athletes at-large*³², so economic globalization explains this engagement better than Dejonghe or diffusion/translation theorists could. The rise of cosmopolitan tastes (as a result of economic interconnectedness) has led to an increased plurality of sports interests, which in turn has created global sports markets that have arms in most corners of the globe.

More importantly, extended flows of economic and cultural commodities now take place in time-space compression—another feature of globalization. The globe’s “international” persuasion rises “concomitantly with the resurgence of the local and national”³³, as demonstrated by Californians drinking South African wine; the Zapatista’s in Chiapas, Mexico recruiting a global audience in their activism for indigenous rights; and Kenyan slum-dwellers watching English Premier League football every night of the week. These examples are illustrative of local spheres being part of a single social space, the last one using media to provide sport as a commodity abroad.

Maguire applies this “media-sport production complex” to international labor migration in athletics, showing how physical athletes can group with international organizations (and actors) and media to produce and project value for the global consumer. This appears to be a “construction” of a market, using the principles of globalization, which might better explain the confounding behavior of supply and demand when we apply neoclassical economic principles to migrating Kenyan athletes. Wolfram Manzenreiter explains in detail a tri-pronged cooperation between international sports organizations, transnational media corps, and multinational sports apparel companies, a “sports industrial complex” that certainly serves as precursor and participant in this same construction.

However, it is really only in the second half of the 20^th-century that athletes routinely compete abroad in order to optimize returns for their skills. Andreff has grouped with other scholars to track movements of athletes, using indicators such as comparative economic status and comparative sports status of the nations between which athletes migrate. A significant trend has been a steep increase in foreign sports labor recruitment (and subsequent migration), followed by regulation aimed at tempering this movement*, and finally a slow liberalization towards the free movement of sports workers—an extension of the 1995 Bosman ruling* by the European Court of Justice³⁴. Although resistance to globalized flows can usually be observed, especially in sport (due to contentious decisions by athletes to leave their countries, usually in a state of outrage at “losing” symbols of national pride), skilled athletes have the overarching tendency (and modern-day luxury) to compete in the highest-caliber and most financially-lucrative arenas abroad.

Two similar modes of thought have arisen in reaction to the fact that is globalization, both of which also identify dependency in sports literature. Scholars in both “camps” paint the world as a victim of globalization run amok in a way relevant to my research question. Firstly, world-systems theory is a “multi-disciplinary, macro-scale approach to world-history and social change”³⁵ devised by renowned sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein. World-systems aptly divides the globe into core, semi-periphery, and periphery countries. The core organizes production that is capital-intensive and requires greater skill to coordinate while the periphery provides high-labor, low-skill production or raw materials³⁶. Wallerstein discards the nation-state as critical in international capital flows out of the periphery towards the core, a movement Vladamir Andreff (et al.) dubs the “muscle drain” when referring to Kenyan athletics³⁷. While the exodus of this resource is not strictly permanent, both scholars see this transfer as having holistically “bad” consequences for the periphery.

Andreff notably chooses to name runners’ legs a primary resource, which can be useful in our analysis but also neglects the possibility of runners (a) being suppliers or (b) having agency in their movements. Thus he cannot consider instances where remittances would be a factor or where returning runners invest in home communities. These types of agency may not exist, which would infer some dependency, but their non-existence must be empirically discerned and not be due to Andreff’s definitional hazard. Perhaps this “drain on resources” is better related to the sponsor apparel companies which play a huge part in the international labor market for runners. With Nike Pegasus sneakers incurring $1.66 of labor costs in China and selling for over $100 in the States, the sports apparel business thrives off the world-systems premise and contributes to the fulfilling this critique of globalization—also part of this strand of literature about dependency in sports migration³⁸. Athletes must compete for powerhouse sponsors on their national turf or risk not finding any sponsor in the unfavorable conditions of the periphery.

Dependency

Another related camp within this set of alter-globalization theories is that of dependency—“dependency” as it pertains to social science and not in the prosaic sense, as it pertains to my research question. World-systems actually grew out of dependency theory but is more of an approach where dependency is a more coherent theory. Dependency recognizes the flow of resources from the periphery to the core, but it tends to include more culpability in this problem’s attribution. Whereas Wallerstein might describe nebulous systems that extract welfare from an external group of poor areas, dependency theorists like Fernando Henrique Cardoso would contend that wealthy nations and their major players “perpetuate a state of dependence”³⁹ by structuring dealings in their economies, societies, and politics to do so. Finally, dependency calls out efforts by wealthy nations to resist attempts by developing countries to mature economically with sanctions and specific policy design.

What we are tracking here is a palpable deterioration in the terms of trade between nations—instead of existing inequities between world-systems⁴⁰. Replace trade between countries with trade of runners and you would have a viable theory to explain migration in athletics—a point that is made first in neoclassical economics. Now add the Singer-Prebisch thesis, which says that unfavorable terms of trade can be between actors inside of the same country⁴¹, and you have a compelling explanation of what is happening on the ground in Kenya. This setup is illustrative of the player-agent relationship in many exploitative sports; Andreff speaks to the reciprocal obligations between parties, both sides having explicit and understood “ex ante” expectations for behavior after the agreement⁴². Agents, managers, runners, and indeed sponsors all expect certain behaviors and results that are hard but often necessary to capture a deal. Running agents especially have an inordinate amount of bargaining influence, so their position as actors and dictators of trade terms adds weight to the agency present in dependency theory.

Conclusion

As described previously, traveling athletes do their jobs through and at the whims of globalization and its forces. Vulnerability in athletics can be explained by world-systems and dependency theory, two alter-globalization ways to view the move of resources from the Global South to the Global North. Andreff prescribes for the ills of globalization as they pertain to global sports migration, proposing a Countertobin Tax* on all movement of athletes that would slow mobility and pay back those “hurt” by out-migration⁴³—a band-aid on world-systems issues in sport. He would also suggest a more streamlined, mandated, and available-to-everyone standard players’ contract, as well better oversight over and better information for actors in the running business—a dependency theory prescription. Unfortunately, alter-globalization views identify sports dependency but cannot explain it: for example, neither view above shows how a runner might be both resource and actor simultaneously, and neither view considers spatial dimensions at the nodes of global networks—only between those nodes*⁴⁴. Alter-globalization theory fails to be nuanced and comprehensive enough to fully answer the research question.

Both of the strands mentioned so far stress systemic forces that define a superstructure in which actors interrelate in their struggle for resources. For instance, information asymmetry is hazard to neoclassical economic theory and a highlight of alter-globalization theory, but in each case it is a result of systemic forces—forces with which actors have to deal. However, actors also possess agency, proactively creating their own forces, networks, and space. Information asymmetry, as our interim paradigm, could be looked at as the norm. Stated differently, actors can connect to share information in a willingness to deal and leave out others; in this case information is created, not information asymmetry. Actors do this—not systems. Migration theory is the most relevant way to describe international sport in this respect, especially having to do with time-space interaction. John Bale and Joseph Maguire apply migration theory to best exemplify international sport movement in their volume entitled The Global Sport Arena⁴⁵.

Early migration theory explains a phenomenon just like globalization does, but in a way more relevant to this study. Over time theorists began to craft barebones migration theory to make it more nuanced, with special socio-cultural focus. However, initial attempts to trace global movement are quantitative and correlative: central place theory speaks of a “threshold” population (or sometime income level) that is needed to see deals within the market for a good or service⁴⁶. Whether this market still works between two countries depends on the market players’ “range”—their willingness to travel a certain distance to acquire the good or service. The way business is done must accommodate trading between countries, so time and space-dimensions become critical in basic migration theory, as Maguire is quick to point out⁴⁷. The central place theory could extend to both international and local relations for Kenyan athletics, especially when “threshold markets” and “range of willingness” have different indices for Kenyan runners, their managers, and their race event managers.

Other similar models have been applied to migration of people, as well as athletes. The gravity model of trade and/or migration⁴⁸ is almost an exact analog of the gravity model by Isaac Newton*⁴⁹. Replace mass of planets with economic mass of countries (GDP or other index), and you can gauge the level of economic interaction between two places, which very often correlates with the level of incentive for migration between states. Of course, a smaller country [planet] with a stalling economy [mass] will be susceptible to a greater economic pull [gravitational force] towards its counterpart in trade [larger planet, or sun], and will move to trade with that country—in the form of migration. This is most definitely the case with runners in the Global South completely orienting their goals towards competing in the Global North. As Manuel Castells puts it: “the power of flows takes precedence over the flow of powers”⁵⁰. Similarly, planets and national economies, whether they are menacing or diminutive, do not explain behavior (i.e. movement or migration) in the world (i.e. universe or international economy) as definitively as might the forces between them—specifically, the draw towards economic interaction and migration in my case study.

Transnational Spaces

However, like the other two strands of literature, these basic models of migration explain holistic movement tendencies. But these models do not explain discrepancies in migration behavior. State policies, and even more so efforts for actors to evade them, bear more effect on the quantity and quality of migration. For example, David Conradson and Adam Latham contend that cross-national traffic can happen in the absence of “friction” in the international exchange—in the form of language and currency barriers, tariffs and quotas, and across-the-board infrastructure compatibility issues⁵¹. However, many scholars now point towards a notable contestation and transgression on the borders between states that once were considered autonomous and self-contained. Nina Schiller looks at multinational companies’ “corporate structures with organizational bases in many states”⁵²—a global restructuring of capital that seek loopholes into and out of nations, instead of merely avoiding Conradson’s “friction”. This is exactly how we see localities connect on separate sides of the world—in transnational communities Arjun Appadurai calls “exclusive, bounded, essentialized, nationalized”⁵³. In modern sports, the interest and participation in Kenyan athletics has become less of a “cartographic fetish”⁵⁴ and more of an emerging transnational, communal space.

As one might expect, transnational business communities not only connect the dots between countries; in fact, there is a lot to making systems and networks work on the ground in constituent countries—in Kenya for international running. Bale is stringent in emphasizing the spatial and regulative variables that determine when and how an athlete may be effectively recruited. Resource extraction theory shows us how port of export, port of import, and final location for goods transported internationally may not be the only drivers of that good’s economics. For example, Richard Snyder defines many variables that explain why lootable wealth may or may not “breed disorder”—contrary to the common misconception that all countries with resources have a “resource curse”⁵⁵. Similarly, runners can be extracted in many ways and with varying degrees of likelihood depending on where they station themselves (with respect to the more expensive areas of Eldoret and Nairobi), with whom they surround themselves (would a manager or international event really import a runner they had never directly or indirectly met?), and the type of regulatory documentation and its availability over time (contracts, visas, tickets). Bale stresses that conditions and dynamics “in-country”, while maybe not affecting the lump-sum demand for athletes/resources, really do define which kind of people end up migrating.

The Credentials of Skilled Labor Migration

On this note, conditions and interactions on the ground are very telling when you consider who actually has the authority to define the de-facto market for Kenyan runners. Cornel Ban writes about Romanian semi-skilled migration to Italy, demonstrating how “informal transnational services” have overrun the Italian state’s “putative sovereign control over citizen mobility”;⁵⁶ basically, certain Romanian families have networks all the way to the middle of Italy—ones with economic prowess in Italy effective enough to have more draw than formal migration programs between the two countries. Calls for employment are via personal suggestion and never by application, and transportation between homes and new places of employment happen by informal transnational taxi services. Italians also have families that recruit all the way to Romania with a set of “informal headhunters”. Tilly says that “migration itself can be conceptualized as a process of network building, which depends on and, in turn, reinforces social relationships across space”. In Kenyan running, this “body shopping” can be state-mandated (the US and many middle-eastern countries essentially outsource running talent), but is overwhelmingly dependent on business-minded migrational ties outside of the state.

Ban’s paper deals with semi-skilled labor migration, but in many ways elite Kenyan runners may be looked at as skilled labor. Although skilled labor very often applies to those workers with exceptional education or other human capital, Kenyan runners (who actually possess a type of physical-human hybrid capital) are skilled in that they have an exceptional talent that almost all others do not. But how to analyze, predict, and ensure the most talent? Migration expert Krisztina Csedo concludes “it can thus be hypothesised that, in migratory contexts, the

recognition of foreign credentials depends considerably on individual immigrants’

ability to signal the value of their qualifications, experience and skills, in specific social contexts”⁵⁷. Basically, in an arena with possibly more candidates than spots, given talent that is difficult to discriminate, “learning/knowing how to do the job” becomes less important than learning to get the job. Social construction of credentials is called “negotiating skills” in Csedo’s paper, and she looks at the labor market unconventionally—as a socially-constituted entity where being skilled and acting qualified might not go hand-in-hand. In sports and especially in athletics, amateur male athletes have similar skill levels and interchangeable times. How and through whom they show off their talent is key, so examining credential-creation is a valuable way to explain behavior of young runners trying to be discovered.

Conclusion

Migration theory, unlike neoclassical economics and globalization, can identify, explain, and trace dependency for the international labor market, especially if the market is one for athletes from the Global South. Early migration theory is systemic and only valuable as a preliminary tool, while Bale adds a geographical/spatial lens in looking at the transnational social space for running. Ban and Csedo, however, show a network of social “skill-creation” and “skill-recruitment” that can describe behavior even at the level of a locality. This model, although not economic or technical, is best at explaining the running network at every step along a runner’s migrationary journey.

In conclusion, all three of my strands—those of neoclassical economic, globalization, and migration theory—help to explain the position of a Kenyan runner as part of the international labor market for athletes. Neoclassical economics shows possibility for athletes’ dependency but fails to begin explaining or identifying that dependency. Globalization theory seizes the opportunity to investigate systemic forces that lead to dependency—especially the difficulties of individual workers the world around. However, even dependency/world systems cannot be nuanced enough to explain the movements of such an exceptional group of athletes. Instead, migration theory seems to best (albeit not comprehensively) interpret and track the precarious existence of runners desperate to be discovered and showcased. Therefore questions addressing multiple strains of migration theory (reviewed above) should most accurately expose the variable reasons for dependency in international athletics. The first two strands of literature remain instrumental in mechanizing what migration theory hypothesizes.