Carol Cárdenas-Castro, Diane M Culver

Despite growing interest in sport migration, research remains heavily skewed toward athletes, leaving coach migration, particularly from Latin America, largely unexplored. This narrative inquiry will investigate how Latin American coaches, trained and socialized in their home countries, make sense of their leadership practices after relocating to Canadian sport environments. Peter Jarvis’s (2006) theory of lifelong learning underpins this study, which will examine how coaches experience disjuncture as they navigate between their biographically ingrained coaching styles and Canadian sport cultural expectations. Ten participants will be purposively selected through sampling: coaches with formal training and 3-5 years of coaching experience in Latin America, currently coaching in Canadian youth sports settings for at least 2 years. Data will be generated through multiple, in-depth narrative interviews and a focus group. The data will be analyzed using thematic narrative analysis to illuminate how coaches construct meaning of their leadership role in the new context. This research responds directly to Carter’s (2016) observation that Latin American sport contexts remain “terra incognita” in migration scholarship and extends Cummings’s (2014) foundational work by foregrounding leadership and professional becoming rather than merely adjustment. Findings will offer reflexive resources for Latin American coaches navigating similar transitions, as well as insights for Canadian sport organizations seeking to support newcomer coaches’ professional development.