Playing to Get a Job: Philippine Basketball League in Poland as a Site of Informal Labor Brokerage

The Department of Sociology and Anthropology (DSA) Seminar Series presents: Playing to Get a Job: Philippine Basketball League in Poland as a Site of Informal Labor Brokerage, a lecture by Olga Wanicka, a PhD candidate from University of Warsaw.

The study investigates how job placement can be studied by examining how recruitment agencies, actors in contemporary migration infrastructure, go about their trade (Xiang and Lindquist 2014). It explores how sports events, like those organized by the Philippine Basketball League (PWB) in Warsaw, serve as arenas for such practices, blending sports with labor brokerage. Ms. Olga Wanicka aims to show how migrant participation in sports events has become a space for intermediation, mostly informal job placement. How this particular league, originating as a local tournament, has evolved into a national platform, connecting Filipino migrant players with sponsors and employers. It reflects the fusion of commercial and social aspects of migration infrastructure, enabling migrants to socialize and forge new connections. For official brokers, it provides a new space for promoting their agencies and attracting employees. In her analysis based on the observations, field notes, and interviews with the actors engaged in the PWB, she will illustrate how migrant sports initiatives offer new avenues for job placement.

Olga Wanicka is a PhD candidate in Sociology at the Doctoral School of Social Sciences, University of Warsaw, Faculty of Applied Social Sciences and Resocialization. Previously, she obtained a master’s degree in criminology at the University of Warsaw and a bachelor’s degree in ethnology and cultural anthropology at the University of Wrocław. Currently, she works as a key investigator of the project “Poland’s inclusion to the global network of job placement: The case of Overseas Filipino Workers” (2019/35/O/HS6/02329), supported by the National Science Center, Poland. She tries to examine new cross-border Overseas Filipino Workers’ migration networks in the context of Poland’s inclusion in the global circulation of employment services and the changing role and nature of contemporary transnational recruitment agencies. Her new additional areas are the new forms of informal brokerage on social media platforms (like YouTube, and Facebook) and sports events.

The program will be held on February 20, 2024, from 5:00-6:30PM, at Faber Hall 101. It will also be live streamed via Zoom through this link: https://bit.ly/DSASemZoom. For more information, please scan the QR code attached or access the link written on the poster and it will directly link you to an image detailing more about the event.

You may head on to our official social media platforms for more details about the program: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ateneosocioanthro/posts/pfbid0kBVjya14FmQhqWs495RmjsYaZ5dn8rubgKJuRrhPT73BFYMhA74TJ4A998vF7BEfl; Twitter: https://twitter.com/AdmuDSA/status/1757702824207769741.

For inquiries, please contact the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at socioanthro.soss@ateneo.edu or visit us at LH 100.