The Black Diaspora and the French World Cup Football Team

Amidst the 2018 FIFA World Cup fever, it was evident that three of the four teams in the semifinals included a majority players with African roots — France, Belgium and England. As the French team swept its second ever victory on Sunday, many rejoiced the triumph of players from the French team from the African diaspora. It also made many viewers and observers skeptical about the everyday experience of many Africans in France and Belgium whose experiences are not as positive as that of their football team. Keeping aside the often-troubling political realities of immigrants in France, the blackness of the team stands out as a reality to all, one that beckons conversation around identity, belonging and their relationship to France. The conversations about the Black diaspora and identity surrounding the French team made me question and seek definition of the Black diaspora and its relationship to the host country and the country of origin. Books like We Won’t Budge by Manthia Diawara, Black France by Dominic Thomas, African Minorities in the New World by Toyin Falola and Niyi Afolabi, and Nation as Network by Victoria Bernal provided personal stories and case studies that reflect the reconfiguration of the notions of sovereignty, nation and citizenship. In light of the increasingly important role played by migration in state politics, these books provide a starting point to meditate upon an individual and their relationship to the diaspora, without a deliberate homogenization of identities for the ease of picking sides.

An important theme that stood out to me as I delved deeper into experiences of individuals in the Black diaspora is the role of media and globalization in transcending national borders and in creating unique imagined communities. These imagined communities are very real as explored in the book Nation as Network in which the Bernal conducts a detailed analysis of the Eritrean political climate and the role of info politics. She zeroes in on the role of digital and social media in facilitating a new relationship between the state and its people both within the state and in the diaspora. The opening of the first Eritrean website, Dehai, in 1992 marked the establishment of a network of Eritreans who not only share information and ethos of the nation with other members on an online platform, but they also re-define their relationship with the state by becoming agents for political change. Therefore, there is a fluid and changing relationship between nation and its people. The two…

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