Paul from Paris

This questions came to mind this week when I met with a lawyer from Ukraine. We spoke in French, a language with which we were both comfortable. And we had similar cultural references and shared a common business background. In this case, I was less aware of cultural difference than is often the case when meeting with lawyers from Morocco or Sweden, for example.

Putting aside technical questions of European Union membership, I have trouble thinking of Ukraine as forming part of Europe. In my mental map, Ukraine is off to the side, squeezed onto a periphery. (And in  my mental map, the same is true of Georgia.) This is, I suspect, largely a relic of the cold war foundations on which postwar Europe has been built. It's also a useful reminder of the different kinds of distance that can separate us from our neighbors.

The setting is professional hockey in France. Apparently, French teams bring in foreign talent, leaving French players on the bench; frustrated, the French players emigrate to Canada or Finland.

To counter this drain, the French hockey federation has taken a carrot-and-stick approach and implemented incentive policies, including:

• a subsidy for teams that cap the number of foreign players, clearing space on the roster for French players; and
• increasing by 15% a levy imposed on international transfers.

The Le Monde article also reports cautionary words from a lawyer, skeptical about EU freedom of movement issues, and a club leader, skeptical because France lacks training infrastructure for promising young players.

This hockey case is small in scale but raises some big questions:

• Why is there resistance to both inflow (immigration) and outflow (emigration) of players? Exactly who is resisting, in other words whose problem is this?
• Given that Canadians are coming to France while French hockey players are going to Canada, is there an international hockey player market? Or is there instead segmentation, with the best players in Canada (or the USA) and mid-level players in places like France? 
• Are French players really being hurt, in terms of yearly or lifetime earnings, or even ice time or goals scored?
• Is the problem in France a weakness in the image of hockey clubs? Does support of a local team, measured in ticket sales, have anything to do with the number of local players on its roster?
• Do spectators really think of hockey players in terms of nationality? Is a Canadian star playing in France perceived differently than a French star? 

These are meaty issues. I'm talking them up in the hope that an enterprising student will see in them a promising topic for research. The scale is small enough to permit interviews, and there's good data  within reach.

From my position as a spectator in Paris, I wish these games had received more coverage. At most, the news carried a snapshot or quick sequence of a French medal-winner. Maybe I didn’t look hard enough, but I couldn’t find any events carried on French television.

The 2008 Beijing Paralympic Games apparently were the biggest ever. The Chinese welcomed more than 4000 athletes. Chinese athletes also won the race to accumulate the most medals, trailed by athletes from Great Britain and the United States. The organizers reportedly sold more than a million tickets to spectators. I’d hesitate to hold up China as a model for accommodating the disabled, but the organizers of the 2008 Beijing Paralympic Games sent a strong message about inclusion and the amazing diversity of human talents.

This image (from Xinhua) shows Eduardo Avila of Mexico, winning the gold medal in the lightweight (-73 kg) category. (Athletes in paralympic judo can’t see.)