Choosing the “right” Nation: A Post/colonial Narrative Inquiry into Alphonso Davies Transnational Belonging in the Canadian Sports/media Complex

This study examines Canadian media narratives surrounding Alphonso Davies from 2016 to 2024, the Canadian sports/media complex, analyzing 116 media items to understand how transnational belonging is constructed, negotiated, and contested for refugee athletes. Through a postcolonial narrative inquiry, informed on theories of racialized governmentality, multiculturalism, and the white colonial sport/media complex, we identify three interrelated narrative motifs that construct conditional belonging: the “ideal refugee,” “choosing the nation,” and the “ghostly figure of the traitor.” The ideal refugee narrative transforms Davies' forced displacement into a triumphant arc from vulnerability to success, erasing the Liberian civil wars' political complexities and his family's structural challenges in Canada. Instead, his story affirms Canada as a benevolent sanctuary and constructs him as a “racialized neoliberal subject” whose success validates meritocracy while obscuring systemic racism. Media narratives demand Davies to repeatedly justify his choice of Canada, positioning his Canadianness as perpetually conditional despite his 11-year path to citizenship. Meanwhile, athletes who chose other nations—Owen Hargreaves and Asmir Begovic-become “ghostly figures” of betrayal, revealing the fragility of belonging for those who fail to demonstrate sufficient gratitude and loyalty. Our analysis demonstrates how sports/media narratives function as “ritual acts of national belonging” and public trials for transnational athletes, sorting bodies along colonial borders of presentability versus expellability. While Davies' celebration represents rare media solidarity toward racialized refugees, it simultaneously reveals the incompleteness of Canada's multicultural promise and the limits of national belonging regimes. We conclude by advocating for post-national frameworks that challenge the nation's monopoly over belonging and facilitate decolonization of political identities.