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Professor, Aalborg University

My research interest in sport and migration issues is based on studies among minority ethnic youngsters in Denmark and sports labor migrants arriving in Scandinavian localities. I have written about the precarious dreams of obtaining social mobility through sports both among young football talents from segregated residential areas and among young African migrants, who are recruited to Scandinavian academies and clubs. My research also engages in a critical discussion of the political expectations and programmes of integration that minority ethnic groups and migrating athletes are faced with in Scandinavian sports clubs. Particular attention in these studies has been devoted to qualifying the policies and programmes for the inclusion of minority ethnic girls and women in sports and physical activity. With support of a grant from the Nordic research councils for the humanities and social sciences, also my research on sports labor migration has been giving voice to female athletes as migrants in developing professional disciplines as women's handball and women's football, and the after-career trajectories of female as well as male footballers for whom Scandinavia has been the receiving context. Theoretically, I (and colleagues) have been arguing for developing a transnational perspective on sports and migration issues. This is most clearly spelt out in the book: Women, Soccer and Transnational Migration that I have edited with Nina C. Tielser (Routledge 2014), and in my recent book: Rethinking Sports and Integration. Developing a transnational perspective on migrants and descendants in sports (Routledge 2018).