Basketball Trafficking

“Basketball Trafficking provides an intimate look at the complex relationship between basketball players, coaches, parents, and mentors in the highs and lows of creating pipelines of opportunities for young Black men in Panama seeking to pursue their hoop dreams in the United States. It also powerfully sounds the alarm on the need to protect young international student athletes who due to anti-Black citizenship and immigration policies are too often viewed as disposable players rather than young people vulnerable to victimization and abuse.” - Kaysha Corinealdi, author of Panama in Black: Afro-Caribbean World Making in the Twentieth Century

“With writing that is illuminating and incisive, Javier Wallace tells the story of the ‘Athletic Industrial Complex’ through the lens of a young Panamanian man, who only dreamed of a better future. Basketball Trafficking, is a major contribution to Global Black Studies and scholarship on race and sports.” - Mark Anthony Neal, author of Looking for Leroy: Illegible Black Masculinity

"[A] shocking and revelatory journey into what is called America’s athletic industrial complex. . . . Wallace’s study aims to counter the dominant narrative associated with Black Panamanian youths like Tito, whose labour—and humanity—has for too long been exploited and undervalued." - Gavin O'Toole, Latin American Review of Books