Argentina’s opponents in the round of 16, the “Socceroos” have long relied on a solid pool of players with an immigrant background, while the draconian government policy on the subject is debated in the country and beyond.
They had not left the head of the hens since 2006. The Australian players are playing their first round of 16 World Cup this Saturday (8 p.m.), against Lionel Messi’s Argentina. The culmination of sixteen long years of trying to reach the knockout stage, and three failures. A resounding return to business, while the training of young talents is stagnating, despite the democratization of sport in the country in recent years. Also despite a certain popularity rating, visible via popular jubilation videos in the middle of the night in Melbourne, when the Socceroos qualified against Denmark. Australia owes its comeback in particular to its pool of young players with an immigrant background, who make up a large part of the current squad. Of the 26 players on the trip to Doha, more than half come from communities from all walks of life: Serbia, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey, Bosnia, New Zealand, Malta, Ireland, Nigeria, Lebanon, Afghanistan…
Failing to be the king sport in the country, still largely relegated behind rugby league and XV, cricket or Australian football, football remains very popular among populations of immigrant origin. The reason is historical: for a long time, football has been a vector of social inclusion for people arriving on Australian soil. The history of the national team can almost be seen as a mirror of the country’s immigration. The selection workforce during the 1960s-1970s included first-generation migrants from Europe (England, Scotland, Germany, Greece, Hungary and the former Yugoslavia). During the 1974 World Cup, a minority of players on the match sheets (barely a third) were born on the island continent.
This 2022 vintage has perhaps never been so multicultural. Some young hopefuls come from the most recent waves of immigration, mainly from Africa – four players were born on the continent. Apart from defensive midfielder Keanu Baccus born in Durban (South Africa), three of them are refugees belonging to the South Sudanese community.
Scorer of the qualifier in the Peru play-off, winger Awer Mabil was born in 1995 in the UN-controlled Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya after his family fled the war in Sudan. He lived his first 10 years there, playing with rolled up socks as a ball, until his family was granted asylum in Australia. “During the journey that my mother and her parents made to reach the camp, many people diedrecalled Awer Mabil in the Guardian. They were captured by rebels trying to flee. How they escaped, we could talk about all night. It looks like something out of a movie, but it’s something they actually experienced.”continues the one who will discover the Premier League with the Newcastle tunic in January.
The parents of defender Thomas Deng also fled the conflict in Sudan. He too was born in Kenya in 1997, before migrating to the mainland island in 2003. As for Garang Kuol, who became the youngest Australian player to step onto the lawn of a World Cup against France, he was born in 2004 in a refugee camp in Egypt, of South Sudanese parents who had fled Darfur, before the family moved to Australia for good when Kuol was just six years old.
Draconian migration policy
Today, that Australia is betting its footballing destiny on these young people with tortuous paths seems totally out of step with the country’s policy on immigration, which has been strongly tightened over the past two decades. While people like Awer Mabil have been able to enter the country through official refugee application programs, they are far from the majority. Many applications have been blocked by significant barriers since the 1990s.
Additional irony: Australia was the first participant in the World Cup to denounce the fate of migrant workers in Qatar, in a video where several of its executives show their support. At the same time, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s government has come under recurrent criticism of its migration policy, which is deemed to be harsh and discriminatory. The imbroglio around the Novak Djokovic case at the beginning of January 2022, who had to wait in a detention center before knowing if he could take part in the Australian Open, had made it possible to highlight the precarious conditions of people waiting. at the gates of Australian territory. Immigration detention centers – notably the one on the island of Nauru – are regularly accused of human rights violations.
The High Commissioner for Refugees has on several occasions declared itself “concerned” by these accusations, emphasizing having observed “gradual deterioration” the situation of refugees and asylum seekers on the island of Nauru during regular visits since 2012. Australia has until January 2023 to fulfill its obligations set by the UN in terms of reception refugees. There are no penalties for missing that deadline, but the country could be placed on a list of non-compliant nations that raise significant human rights concerns. Which would stain, even in Qatar.