Illicit Massage Parlors in Los Angeles County and New York City: Stories from Women Workers

By John J. Chin, Lois M. Takahashi, Yeonsoo Baik, Caitlin Ho, Stacy To, Abigail Radaza, Elizabeth S.C. Wu, Sungmin Lee, Melanie Dulfo, Daun Jung  

Recent media accounts about high-net-worth individuals, including New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, being identified as clients of illicit massage parlors have gained national attention.1 Other media reports have documented raids, mass arrests and undercover stings of massage parlors in US cities and suburbs. Although these recent accounts highlight the linkages between massage parlors and human trafficking and the fact that many of these women are Asian immigrants, rarely has there been media coverage of the daily experiences of the workers in these illicit massage parlors from their own perspectives. Why are women working in these establishments and under what conditions do they labor? What is the arrest process like for them? What solutions can be offered that do not further penalize, traumatize, or victimize an already vulnerable population? We aim in this analysis to summarize previous research and to report on our recent interviews with Asian immigrant women working in illicit massage parlors in New York City and Los Angeles County – to portray a full range of “occupational arrangements, power relations, and worker experiences.” By “illicit,” we mean a subset of massage parlors that purport to operate as legal businesses but where sexual services are illegally bought and sold. Our analysis suggests that some of the polarized debates around illicit massage parlors can be at least partly reconciled by framing massage parlor work as a labor rights issue, as part of the larger immigrant story of survival, and as a law enforcement reform issue

New York: Hunter College of the City University of New York and Los Angeles: University of Southern California, 2019. 44p.