Office hours by arrangement
Christian Ungruhe is a trained anthropologist with a strong interdisciplinary approach and working experience in the fields of critical development studies, human geography, global history, sport sociology and social anthropology. In his research, he focusses on issues of migration and mobility in the realm of youth, gender, work and sport with a regional emphasis on rural and urban West Africa.
His publications feature two monographs, ‘Lasten tragen, Moderne befördern. Wanderarbeit, Jugend, Erwachsenwerden und ihre geschlechtsspezifischen Differenzierungen in Ghana’ (‘Carrying load, transporting modernity. Gendered perspectives on labour migration, youth and social becoming in Ghana’) (Lit Verlag; 2018) and ‘African Football Migration. Aspirations, Experiences and Trajectories’ (with Paul Darby and James Esson; Manchester University Press; 2022).
He serves as spokesperson for the International Network for Research in Sports and Migration Issues and currently works as a postdoctoral researcher on the project "Migration and Translocality in West Africa" (MiTra-WA).
Passau: South-South Migration, Translocality and youth participation in Africa
Since June 2025, Christian Ungruhe has been leading the project “Transnational negotiations of south-south migration. Perspectives from the Global South using the example of Kenyan football migration to Thailand”, funded by the Research and Transfer Pool at the University of Passau. In this project, he builds on his Marie Curie research at Erasmus University Rotterdam and examines dynamics of migration processes among African football players in South-East Asia from a long-term and transnational perspective.
Previously, between January and September 2025, he was leading the short-term research project “GenZ Africa? Youth and the transnational struggle for social participation using the example of Ghana,” also funded by the Research and Transfer Pool at the University of Passau. His research focused on the emergence of a pan-African Generation Z in the context of youth protests on the continent.
Between September 2021 and February 2025, he was member of the international research consortium ‘Migration and Translocality in West Africa’ (MiTra-WA), funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. In his work, he studied interlinkages and dynamics between migrants’ places of origin and destination to better understand the drivers, practices, structures and processes of rural-urban and cross-border migration and their interconnected impacts for rural and urban settings in West Africa. Empirically, he pursued a longitudinal study on young women’s migration practices from northern Ghana and their impact on gender relations and women’s social and economic participation and in the region.
Rotterdam: Mobile Lifeworlds
Between 2019 and 2021, he was a Marie Curie fellow at the Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication (ESHCC) at Erasmus University Rotterdam (the Netherlands). In his project ‘Mobile Life Worlds. Trajectories of West African football migrants en route and in South-East Asia’ he followed football players who pursue professional contracts in the Global South. Undertaking a longitudinal ethnographic approach, he particularly worked with players whom he had accompanied since 2010 and looked at the processes of their social, spatial and everyday mobilities and subjectivities on the road and in the making, with an emphasis on how the COVID-19 pandemic had impacted on their migration projects.
Aarhus: Sport migration and precarious life course trajectories
Before this, he worked at Aarhus University (Denmark) in a postdoc project on post-career life course trajectories of West African footballers in Northern Europe (2015-2019). By combining lenses of spatiality and temporality, his work dealt with players’ transitions into post-playing careers and the transformation of their physical capital into other relevant forms of social, cultural and economic capital. In particular, he focussed on former players’ ambivalent experiences of precarity and their communication in transnational settings (e.g., with kin and friends at places of origin).
Bayreuth: Migration, Youth, Sport
In 2015, he completed his PhD project at Bayreuth University (Germany) in which he dealt with the relationship between internal migration practices and the gendered negotiations of life phases of youth and social adulthood among young people from rural northern Ghana in the country’s southern cities. His project was based on thirteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in various Ghanaian localities. Beside this, between 2009-2013, he was working in a project on the trajectories of West African football players to and in Europe. (Bayreuth University). He particularly studied processes of racial ‘Othering’ as well as players’ responses to and the reproduction of existing images of Black people in Germany more generally.
Münster: "Street children's" life course trajectories
He started his academic career in 2005 when he graduated from the University of Münster (Germany) with an empirical study on ‘street children's’ life course trajectories in southern Ghana.
Monographs:
| Year | Publication |
|---|---|
| 2022 | with Paul Darby and James Esson: African Football Migration: Aspirations, Experiences and Trajectories. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 288 pp. |
| 2018 | Lasten tragen, Moderne befördern. Wanderarbeit, Jugend, Erwachsenwerden und ihre geschlechtsspezifischen Differenzierungen in Ghana. Berlin: Lit Verlag, 438 pp. |
Edited volumes:
| Year | Publication |
|---|---|
| 2024 | with Stefanie Wehner (eds.): Migration, Translocality and Development in Times of Climate Change, Mitra|WA Working Paper Series. |
| 2019 | with Ute Röschenthaler and Mamadou Diawara (eds.): Dossier: Working For Better Lives: Mobilities and Trajectories of Young People in West and Central Africa, Cadernos de Estudos Africanos 37 |
| 2016 | with Juliane Müller (eds.); Special Theme: Neue Perspektiven einer Ethnologie des Sports, Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 141 (1). |
| 2016 | with Jeannett Martin and Tabea Häberlein (eds.): Journal Special Issue: Images, Imagination and the Making of Future in Africa: Children, Youth and the Role of Education, anthropochildren 6. |
| 2012 | with Anna Bischof, Miriam Busse, Edda Currle and Susanne Lochner (eds.): Migration und Teilhabe auf dem Arbeitsmarkt. Genutzte Potentiale oder verschwendete Ressourcen? Arbeitspapiere aus der Verbundforschung. München: ForMig |
Peer-reviewed articles:
Book chapters and non-peer reviewed articles:
| Year | Publication |
|---|---|
| 2025 | Playing with precarity. Risks, uncertainties and hardships among male professional African football migrants. Juridikum 2/2025: 208-217. |
| 2025 | with Stefanie Wehner, Malte Steinbrink and John Narh: Empirical data from a multi-local survey on migration and translocal structures in Ghana (Northern Region, Eastern Region, Greater Accra Region). GFZ Data Services. doi.org/10.5880/fidgeo.2023.041 |
| 2025 | with Stefanie Wehner and Yussuf Yakubu: Women migrants in Ghana’s urban informal sector: Tackling translocal precarity of kayayei. Mitra|WA Policy Briefs, University of Passau. |
| 2024 | Football Migration from Africa. In: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung. Dossier: Migration and Sport. |
| 2024 | with Ronja Bohnenkämper et al.: Socio-economic development and migration in rural Ghana: report from field research in Amedzofe, Volta Region. In: Christian Ungruhe and Stefanie Wehner (eds.), Migration, Translocality and Development in Times of Climate Change. University of Passau: MiTra|WA Working Paper Series No. 3. |
| 2023 | with Malte Steinbrink and Joseph Teye: Mobiles Westafrika. Kontinuitäten und Dynamiken von Migration in Zeiten klimatischer Veränderungen. Geographische Rundschau 75 (10): 30-35. |
| 2021 | Abseits der Krise. Migration, Jugend und soziale Teilhabe in Nordghana. In: Malte Steinbrink, Matthias Gebauer und Dieter Anhuf (eds.), Afrika - Ein Kontinent in Bewegung. Passau: Universität Passau, pp. 93-100. |
| 2020 | with Sine Agergaard: Postcareer Precarity. Occupational challenges among former West African footballers in Northern Europe. In: Todd Cleveland, Tarminder Kaur and Gerard Akindes (eds.), Sports in Africa. Past and Present. Athens: Ohio University Press, pp. 190-203. |
| 2020 | A lesson in composure. Learning from migrants in times of Covid-19, UCL Medical Anthropology Blog |
| 2019 | Bayreuther Erklärung: Fake News und Farce, DDS – Die Demokratische Schule 12/2019: 7-8. |
| 2018 | with Paul Darby and James Esson: Africa: SDP and Sports Academies. In: Holly Collison, Simon Darnell, Richard Giulianotti and P. David Howe (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Sport for Development and Peace. London: Routledge, pp. 419-429. |
| 2018 | Ein prekäres Spiel. Erfahrungen von Risiken und Unsicherheit unter afrikanischen Profifußballern in Deutschland. In: Julia Haß and Stephanie Schütze (eds.), Ballspiele, Transkulturalität und Gender. Ethnologische und altamerikanistische Perspektiven (Berliner Blätter – Ethnographische und Ethnologische Beiträge 77): 94-114. |
| 2014 | Migration, Marriage and Modernity: Motives, Impacts and Negotiations of Rural-Urban Circulation amongst Young Women in Northern Ghana. In: Mustafa Abdalla, Denise Dias Barros and Marina Berthet (eds.), Spaces in Movement. New Perspectives on Migration in African Settings. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe, pp. 105-125. |
| 2012 | ‚Die geborenen Sportler‘. Zur Konstruktion von Andersartigkeit afrikanischer Profifußballer in Deutschland. In: Anna Bischof, Miriam Busse, Edda Currle, Susanne Lochner and Christian Ungruhe (eds.), Migration und Teilhabe auf dem Arbeitsmarkt. Genutzte Potentiale oder verschwendete Ressourcen? Arbeitspapiere aus der Verbundforschung. München: ForMig, pp. 39-59. |
| 2011 | Anders bleiben. Auseinandersetzungen mit Migration und Integration afrikanischer Profifußballer in Deutschland. In: Herbert Popp (ed.), Migration und Integration in Deutschland. Bayreuth: Naturwissenschaftliche Gesellschaft Bayreuth, pp. 95-105. |
| 2011 | with Erdmute Alber: Fans and States at Work: Eine Reise ghanaischer Fußballfans zur Fußball-weltmeisterschaft 2010 in Südafrika. In: Nikolaus Schareika, Eva Spies and Pierre-Yves Le Meur (eds.), Auf dem Boden der Tatsachen. Festschrift für Thomas Bierschenk. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe, pp. 395-413. |
| 2007 | with Tabea Häberlein: Fosterage and adoption in West Africa reviewed: New theoretical approaches on the basis of empirical research – Workshop in Thurnau bei Bayreuth, 21.-23. Mai 2007, Afrika Spektrum 42 (2): 367-372. |
Reviews:
| Year | Publication |
|---|---|
| 2019 | Nauja Kleist and Dorte Thorsen (eds.): Hope and Uncertainty in Contemporary African Migration (London & New York: Routledge), Peripherie 156: 494-495. |
| 2015 | Juliane Müller: Migration, Geschlecht und Fußball zwischen Bolivien und Spanien. Netzwerke – Räume – Körper (Berlin: Reimer), Sociologus 65 (1): 124-127. |
| 2009 | Laura Maria Agustín: Sex at the Margins. Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry (London: Zed Books), Sociologus: 59 (1): 108-112. |
| 2007 | Caterine Christiansen, Mats Utas and Henrik E. Vigh (eds.): Navigating Youth, Generating Adulthood. Social Becoming in an African Context (Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet), Sociologus (57) 2: 271-275. |
Podcasts/ Videos/ Social Media:
Sport and Migration Network: Book Discussion #1 - Handbook on Sport and Migration (eds.): J. Maguire, K. Liston & M. Falcous) (24 March 2025)
SportsAfrica Network: Book Discussion - African Football Migration. Aspirations, Experiences and Trajectories (P. Darby, J. Esson & C. Ungruhe) (17 April 2024)
New Books Network: Interview with authors of African Football Migration. Aspirations, Experiences and Trajectories (P. Darby, J. Esson & C. Ungruhe) (4 May 2022)
Newspaper and online media reports:
Der Fußballnachwuchs kommt aus Ghana - aber bleibt dort nicht (Frankfurter Rundschau; 14 January 2025; author: Brigitte Wenger)
Fußball im Senegal. Der Fluch der Hoffnung (Frankfurter Allgemeine, 28 March 2023; author: Brigitte Wenger)
How Europe decides who wins the World Cup (New York Times, 18 November 2022; authors: Tariq Panja, Elian Peltier and Rory Smith)
East African footballers are a rarity on the global stage: we analysed why (The Conversation, 4 September 2022) [French Version: Les footballeurs d'Afrique de l'Est sont rares sur la scène internationale: nous avons cherché les raisons]
The fighting spirit of young African footballers who migrate overseas (The Conversation, 17 February 2022; with James Esson and Paul Darby)
The precarious fate of African footballers after their game ends (The Conversation, 20 June 2021; with Sine Agergaard) [French Version: Le sort précaire des footballeurs africains en Europe après leur ultime match]
Forsker: I Ghana er fodbolden en vej til at avancere i samfundet – men de unge afrikanere ignorerer faldgruberne (Politiken, 13 November 2018)
Rassismus auf dem Rasen (Nürnberger Zeitung, 27 June 2012)
Sie suchen jede Gelegenheit & Zäh zum Ziel (Nordbayerischer Kurier, 4 April 2012)
Fans im Auftrag der Regierung (Nordbayerischer Kurier, 13 July 2010)
Die Welt im Fußball-Fieber (Fränkische Zeitung, 6 June 2010)
Welchen Talenten gelingt der Steilpass nach Europa? (Fränkischer Tag, 16 December 2009)
Radio features:
Subtile Ausgrenzung: Wie afrikanische Fußballspieler diskriminiert werden (Bayern 2, 15 June 2012)
Fußballmigration aus Afrika (Campusradio Köln, 12 June 2012)
Afrikanische Fußballmigranten (RBB Kulturradio, 4 June 2012)
Winter 25/26
Methods and Theories of Development (Lecture; Master level)
Interdisciplinary Development Seminar (Master level)
Winter 24/25
Migration and Development: Spatial mobilities and social transformation in West Africa (Bachelor level; under the framework of the Bavarian Virtual University)
Summer 23
Geographies of education in the Global South (Bachelor level)
Academic writing in human geography (Advanced Bachelor and Master level)
Winter 22/23
Ghana on the move: Geographies of structural change (Master level)
Research field trip: Ghana (Master level)
Academic writing in human geography (Advanced Bachelor and Master level)
Migration, Translocality and Livelihoods in West Africa (Master and Phd level)
Summer 22
Geographies of sport (Master level)
Inquiry-based learning: Qualitative data analyses with MAXQDA (Master level)
Winter 21/22
Migration and development in West Africa (Master level)
Inquiry-based learning: Qualitative meta-studies (Master level)
