Has football become a game where winning matches or even trophies does not matter?

The agreement is that all around this has been a sound economic exchange. BBC Sport’s Chief Football writer Phil McNulty makes that point. Manchester United are poised to make a handsome profit of some £68 million. Real Madrid will begin to make a commercial campaign with the likes of Kaka and Ronaldo by selling as much merchandise as possible with the club brand. One even wonders if it really matters that Real Madrid wins any trophies. We can speculate that not winning any trophies would bring more attention and thus fame to the club than winning anything.

Cristiano Ronaldo.
[image by Paolo Camera,
some rights reserved]

Has football become a game where winning matches or even trophies does not matter? A quick glance over the Deloitte Football Money League (2009) suggests so. Take a look at the league and you will find teams that won no trophies such as Fenerbahçe, a newcomer. But, from the point of view of the two clubs, apparently a sound investment has been made. So Ronaldo, we are told, will prove his worth and will make lots of money for himself and his clubs. 

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Engin F Isin is professor in politics and international studies and director of the Centre for Citizenship, Identities and Governance at the Open University.

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After watching recent news images of Afghani refugees climbing razor-wired fences around a Greek port, I prepared myself for the tabloid headlines screaming ‘invasion’ that would inevitably come the next day and for the government to announce yet more measures to sure up the borders of Great Britain. It seemed impossible to imagine a time when politicians in Europe actually encouraged ‘free’ movement, and discouraged the use of passports. Writers in the 16th century extolled the virtues of travel just for the sake of ‘curiosity’, and the onus was on receiving territories to extend a sense of hospitality to the traveller.

Of course, this is an idealised description: then as today, some travellers were more welcome than others. But reading Adam McKeown’s new book, Melancholy Order: Asian Migration and the Globalisation of Borders, reminded me that our current web of migration regulations has a history, one embedded in the 19th century exclusion of Asian migrants from white settler colonies in the Pacific. His detailed research raises several paradoxes which perhaps point to why, even with the intense focus given to migration control by successive governments, we still have a situation that the International Organisation of Migration (2003) has called a ‘migration governability crisis’.

The first paradox is that contemporary border controls evolved from regulations developed by settler nations such as the United States and Australia, which were ostensibly founded on the premise of egalitarianism by pioneers of political freedoms despite the obvious racism in ‘white only’ migration policies and the decimation of indigenous populations. As a result, over time, discrimination has become acceptable at borders but not overtly within the state itself.

A boat crowded with Cuban refugees arrives in Key West, Florida, during the 1980 Mariel Boatlift
[image in the public domain, from United States Coastguard Service, sourced from Wikimedia]

Second, while neo-liberal globalisation is premised on an idea of free trade between countries, migration control is an obstacle to mobility. As a result, we have seen increasing separation between regulations relating to commerce and those relating to migration. Border control is now designed to facilitate some kinds of mobility, and migrants, and block others. Attempting to guarantee freedom, for some at least, through the imposition of regulations, transformed migration for others into an act of evasion and criminality. The meaning of ‘free’ has become ambiguous and opaque as a result.

The third paradox raised in McKeown’s research is that while migration laws coerce and exclude, interrogate, evaluate and attempt to quantify migrants, they are also considered as vehicles of justice, fairness, the ‘rule of law‘, and ‘efficiency’. They reflect normative ideals of how things should be, including the international order of states. It is impossible not to reflect on these distinctions and the right to be mobile when arriving at Heathrow Airport with an EU passport that only needs to be held up for a cursory glance by an immigration officer. To the left Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe queue up and wait. I am classified as a professional migrant, incorporated into a legal, formal administration, probably disappearing from the category of migrant altogether. In contradistinction are the ‘others’, those that work in 3D (domestic, dirty and dangerous jobs) who face resistance to their formal recognition within national labour regimes.

State institutions appear unable to resolve the inherent tensions in these paradoxes so the migrant continues to find their own way through red tape and over razor-wire. The kafka-esque world of immigration bureaucracy and rigid state regulations is met by the resilient human abilities of evasion and obfuscation in the hope of a better life.

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Melancholy Order: Asian Migration and the Globalisation of Borders
Adam McKeown, published by Colombia University Press

About the author

Melissa Butcher is a Lecturer in Human Geography at the Open University. Her research and teaching focuses on managing change in culturally diverse urban spaces.

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Two millennia ago the great Roman historian and senator, Tacitus, advised the world that in a state where corruption abounds, laws must be very numerous indeed. In the seventeenth century William Shakespeare’s Cardinal Wolsey confided that ‘corruption wins not more than honesty’. A century later Edward Gibbons told us that corruption was the most ‘infallible symptom of constitutional liberty’. And in the last century Mahatma Gandhi declared that corruption ‘need not be an inevitable product of democracy’, while former Prime Minister Anthony Eden thought that corruption had ‘never been compulsory’ and that there was always another way. All these wise sagacious words over the centuries, and yet, pardon me for observing, isn’t the scandal over politician expenses rather too predictable? We should have seen it coming.

Britain is perceived as becoming more and more corrupt according to the anti-corruption group

With increasing sleaze enveloping the Brown Government during 2009 at the peak of the recession, it is worth reminding ourselves of the findings of the corruption league table for nations, as produced each year by Transparency International. Their latest report was published before the scandal broke over the Prime Minister’s advisor’s email crisis in April 2009, before the controversy around MP second home allowances and before the fall out from the politician expenses furore this month.

Britain is perceived as becoming more and more corrupt according to the anti-corruption group. As examples Transparency International referred to Britain’s ‘wretched and woeful record’ in prosecuting business executives for paying bribes to foreign politicians and officials to win contracts, the plethora of political scandals about ‘cash for honours’ and the government’s decision to drop the investigation into allegations that BAE paid bribes to Saudi royals. These events contributed to a significant increase in the perceived level of corruption in Britain, with a corresponding fall from 12^th to 16^th place in the world corruption rankings between 2007 and 2008. This is the UK’s worst performance since 1995 when records began.

The survey, which focused upon how we are perceived by people in other countries, revealed that Denmark, New Zealand and Sweden shared top spot, followed by Singapore, Finland and Switzerland, with Afghanistan, Haiti, Iraq, Burma and Somalia in the bottom five of 180 nations. The higher the corruption perception score, the lower the perceived degree of corruption within a country. In global terms it seems Britain compares relatively well but there are obvious grounds for improvement, even more so now that the world media have feasted on the slow seeping of allegations about the conduct of not so ‘honourable’ Members from all parties.

Britain’s ‘wretched and woeful record’ in prosecuting business executives

Remarkably, since Britain signed an Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development global anti-corruption treaty in 1997, we have prosecuted only one person for bribing an official from another government. The Department of Business defended the government’s record in February this year, explaining that twenty bribery cases were currently being investigated following the only solitary successful prosecution in September 2008.

Is it therefore surprising that a government so reluctant to prosecute corruption turns a blind eye to failures of its own, even though, as MPs painfully keep repeating, they were only following guidelines; guidelines of course they themselves set. The herd instinct can have dangerous repercussions where integrity and honesty are questioned.

National media have been rightly appalled at the scale of the exposed expense racket. Whether it be to claim for second homes close to their first home, in one case a mere 100 yards from the second property, or to conveniently change the status of homes to suit their financial best interests, or make claims for repairs and maintenance on properties owned outright by a third party, MPs have badly exceeded the spirit of the guidelines. They have endorsed Gibbons but taken no notice of Eden’s warning.

But I was more concerned about claims for more everyday items, those items which you and I can only purchase with our own salaries.

These items include:

• Five pence for a carrier bag from a supermarket
• Christmas tree decorations
• Light bulbs
• Bin liners
• Lavatory seats
• Tampons
• Chandeliers
• Remembrance Day wreaths
• Lawnmowers and lawnmower repairs
• Moat maintenance
• Swimming pool cleaning
• Dog food
• Dog enclosure
• Chauffeurs
• An ironing board
• Slotted spoons
• Comics
• Nappies
• The removal of moles from a lawn
• Pipe repairs under a tennis court
• Sky sport subscriptions
• A pram
• Hanging baskets
• An IKEA bathrobe
• Mock Tudor beams
• Food when the Commons is no longer sitting
• Council tax discounts
• Coat hangers
• Sachets of mulled wine
• A mousetrap
• A lemon
• A wooden spoon
• A plug

Not to mention the John Lewis shopping list of Plasma television sets, furniture and fittings. Seriously, I ask you, since when is having a clean moat vital in order to be an effective Member of Parliament? And consider the other side of privilege - pensioners struggling on benefits or injured UK soldiers in hospital having to pay to watch television.

According to the Independent, Labour MPs have just been sent an email from the parliamentary Labour party informing them that media reports suggesting that ‘MPS are generally claiming excessively’ are not true. Some experts tell us the expense rip off is because we now have a ‘professional’ politician at Westminster. But I think this insults the integrity of many professionals working in Britain.

What seems clear is that the rising scandal over expenses damages the integrity of our political system. As Transparency International warned us last year we had already begun to slip down the corruption credibility league. I can imagine we may sink without trace once this lot is sorted out. If I were you check the Transparency International website next February and see where Britain has come in 2009. Out of the top thirty is my bet. For a Government obsessed with league tables this CPI league table is one the Government will want to hide from view.

By then of course we might have an ‘independent’ panel assessing all MP claims or a different system to fund second homes but something in what Ghandi told us persuades me that the next generation of MPs may find a way round even the most zealous of watchdogs. Give them a moral compass and they still would want to claim for it.

It gives me no pleasure at all to reflect that while many of these MPs may indeed lose their seats in the General Election of 2010 because of excessive expense claims a few will get to keep those lavatory seats we have paid for.

About the author

Richard Skellington edits Society Matters for the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Open University. He’s an administrator who manages the Environment, Development and International Studies programme.

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