Cyclical Migrants: Canadian Hockey and Chilean Fútbol Players in the Twenty-First Century

This paper compares the temporary international migration of Canadian hockey players and Chilean football players under the logics of the globalization of neoliberal sports businesses and the increasing importance of temporary migration.  By comparing these seemingly widely different cases we aim at showing the growing similarities in the structuring of the business of sports in both “developed” and “underdeveloped” countries.  We also aim to show through the lens of sports how, in these two countries construed as magnets for immigration, temporary emigration has become part of the strategies of increasingly skilled labour forces faced with precarious employment at home, even when workers have different mobility capitals.