Olympic citizenship and sporting nationality

Organised by

• Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies
• GGP: Global Governance Programme
• GlobalCit: Global Citzenship Observatory

Ahead of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, China naturalized the California-born female figure skater Beverly Zhu; the country had not won a medal in that event since 1998. The practice of naturalizing talented individuals from other countries to represent their new nations in international sporting competitions dates as far back as Ancient Greece. Such ‘Olympic citizenship’ reflects both the states’ aspiration to enhance their global prestige and the individuals’ interests in securing the best possible conditions for participating in competitive sports. It sometimes overlaps with ‘sporting nationality’ – the nationality that sportspersons with multiple nationality opt to use in international contests. In this webinar, we use these two notions to explore ‘who may represent the nation’ and consider how answers to this question have historically embodied implicit race and gender hierarchies. We discuss how the strategic use of passports, and national membership more broadly, play out in the global race for talent, where citizenship regimes intersect with the rules governing different competitive sports.

This event will be recorded.

Links:

• Ornella Nzindukiyimana
• Gijsbert Oonk
• Peter Spiro