From identification to dis-identification: case studies of job loss in professional football

Abstract

Taken from a broader study of the careers of professional footballers, this article uses two player stories of job loss to offer contrasting experiences of cynical dis-identification. I examine how in research on the careers of sports workers, athletes so often express discontent yet maintain an apparent dedication and commitment to their craft. In contrast to the overwhelming focus on the construction and shaping of workplace identity, this article introduces the notion of dis-identification to explain how athletes resist coach/managerial domination in an occupation in which high commitment is assumed by expressing cynical and instrumental attitudes to their jobs: cynical athletes dis-identify with dominant cultural prescriptions so as to distance themselves from ideological rhetoric, a process in which subjectivities are ‘externalised’. Although cynical athletes may feel like autonomous agents, nevertheless, they still perform managerial norms and rituals.

Keywords:

• dis-identification
• resistance
• sport-as-work
• biography
• job loss

Notes

1. Now with the celebrated assistance of sports psychology.

2. A distinction is made here between job loss and (non or) de-selection; crucially, not being in paid work is different from de-selection, a term which implies a non-playing status rather than unemployment (Grove et al. 2004).

3. In England approximately 600–700 players are released by employers each season; and nearly 25% of the playing workforce experiences some type of permanent or temporary job move each year (Roderick 2012b). The notion of job loss is used here rather than unemployment, however, to help emphasise job loss as a transition and to indicate the rapid search for new employment. The focus is mostly about involuntary job loss, although it is not uncommon for players to voluntarily decide against re-signing a contract offer if they believe they are not going to play an active role.

4. Players may be signed on a week-by-week ‘non-contract’ basis, a situation which affords no long-term employment security.