| Sumario: | Elite social clubs in Buenos Aires have long used amateur rugby to form class‐appropriate manhood, defining themselves against the moral other of professional sports, particularly the highly popular soccer football. When rugby became professional internationally in 1995, these clubs reacted defensively, recommitting to amateurism and banning players who played professionally overseas. This article examines elite reactions to professionalization, the experiences of players returning from contracts overseas, and the (im)mobility strategies of young men. What emerges are the articulations between local class reproduction and global systems: the centrality of social clubs in forming elite values, experiences, and affective relations; the embeddedness of mobility aspirations within local logics and kinship; and the accommodation of a disruptive outside power within existing class and gender frameworks. [Argentina, class, gender, globalization, labor, rugby, sport, masculinities, young people]
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