The professionnal paths of top athletes: pluralities and inequalities – PROPA

“The professional paths of top athletes (TA’s)” is a research subject that has not yet been fully explored by the social sciences. Sociological studies analyze the way in which TA manage to juggle their dual sports and professional projects, and how they handle their career transition. As a result, there are marked differences in the way they anticipate their professional integration according to their sport’s specific features, their age, their gender and their status (Olympic/Paralympic). Biographies on ex-TA’s professional paths can be found in history. But there is no global study on professional careers. This project intends to uncover inequalities in ex-TA’s professional paths. We will focus on post-sports careers to analyze the jobs they have held and thus better understand professional careers’ structure and stages: what proportion of TA’s are employed in the sport sector? What jobs do they hold successively during their career? What are the features of these jobs (employment contracts, salary, level of responsibility, etc.)?
This work will make it possible to bring to light multi-factorial inequalities (according to gender, sport specialty, age, status, etc.) that make their respective professional paths more or less fragile.
The methodology envisaged is a multidisciplinary and hybrid one. In order to apprehend their professional paths in the medium and long-term, we will mobilize sociological and historical research methods well controlled by our team. Three steps will structure this project. The first phase will consist of a census of TA’s since the introduction of the TA status in 1982. From this database, we will proceed to a stratified sampling of 10,000 people that will respect the structure of the parent population on the following criteria: gender, age, sports specialty, status (Olympic / Paralympic). Secondly, we will conduct a questionnaire survey among this sample of individuals with an aim to identify the different stages in their professional careers. This involves analyzing the features of the jobs held on the basis of objective indicators to understand the knowledge and skills used in these jobs. The possible links with the schooling, sports career and training courses will be questioned. This quantitative stage makes it possible, on the one hand, to generate new knowledge about TA’s (no survey of this scale has ever been carried out) and, on the other hand, to better design the qualitative step. This third phase will allow for a more precise understanding of each individual’s professional trajectory through a better knowledge of their experience and personal path. Such is the objective of this socio-historical protocol within which 300 biographical interviews will be conducted. The aim will be to determine typical profiles and question the impact of gender differences, sports and status, but also the personal resources available to the TA’s. We also wish to understand the links between the sports experience and access to key political positions (for ex-TA’s become sports ministers) via a complementary analysis of ministerial archives.
The results will be made available to the general public (creation of an interactive dashboard hosted on a website, various interventions, communication on social networks) and scientifically valued (conferences, articles and book).
The team that is carrying out this project is attached to the Gustave Eiffel University’s Comparative Analysis of Powers laboratory. It is the sports science team specialized in sociology and history. Members are specialists in employment and training issues in the sports sector. In addition, several members have worked specifically on TA’s, gender and/or disability.