Massage Business Research Articles

The Complicated Web of Trauma Proliferation Experienced by ‘Un-homed’ Immigrant Women Exploited in Illicit Massage Businesses

The Complicated Web of Trauma Proliferation Experienced by ‘Un-homed’ Immigrant Women Exploited in Illicit Massage Businesses

Shame Buffers and Spatial Risk-Mitigation: Exploring the effects of social stigma on the locational strategies of illicit massage businesses and their customers

Traditional locational analysis in urban retail/business geography begins with the assumption that customers will visit retail locations that are most convenient, and that businesses that locate close to their customers’ residences or workplaces would be preferred to locations farther from those places. This assumption is problematic when applied to economic activities for which social stigma exists. In this article, we examine the influence of social stigma on the locational choices made by customers of illicit massage businesses in the Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas metropolitan area. We introduce the concept of shame buffers – zones around the places to which each customer is most deeply socially embedded, their home, workplace, and other community spaces, where the customer would not engage in stigmatized behaviors for fear of being observed and facing social shaming. We then examine the validity of the shame-buffer concept by analyzing customers' mobility patterns for both legal and illicit massage businesses in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metropolitan Area (DFW metro).

Understanding the role of street network configurations in the placement of illegitimately operating facilities

AbstractThe role of street networks in shaping the spatial distribution of crime has become a foundational component within environmental criminology. Most studies, however, have focused on opportunistic crime types, such as property offenses. In this study, we instead research a theoretically distinct phenomenon by examining the placement of venues that host criminal activity. In particular, we study the relationship between network structure and the placement of illicit massage businesses, which operate on the intersections of illicit and legitimate activity by hosting illicit commercial sex under the guise of legitimate massage. We model their placement as a function of two network metrics: betweenness, which measures a street's usage potential, and a variant called “local betweenness,” which measures the potential of nearby streets. Multilevel models are used to examine the importance of these street‐level metrics while accounting for tract‐level covariates. Our findings demonstrate that, unlike property crimes, illicit massage businesses tend to be located on streets that are themselves quiet but that are close to areas of high activity. Such locations seem to combine accessibility and discretion, and therefore, represent ideal conditions for such businesses to thrive. Our findings can inform problem‐oriented approaches to prevent the harms associated with illegitimately operating businesses.

Legal violence: the struggles of Thai women in Thai massage businesses.

Prior studies of legal violence concerning minority groups in the United States are often linked to Immigration Law. Drawing primarily from 30 interviews with Thai massage business owners in Los Angeles, this article reveals how the implementation of local and federal regulations and laws regarding massage businesses constitutes legal violence. Using Crenshaw's structural, political, and representational intersectionality, this article demonstrates how Thai women's race, ethnicity, and gender affect their experiences in countering the state regulations. The analysis focuses on two interrelated areas of Thai massage business owners' and Thai massage therapists' lives-the strict government surveillance of Thai massage business operations and the enforcement of professional certification. This legal violence toward Thai massage owners and massage therapists is rooted in a legal system that aims to protect consumers. Nevertheless, the effect of legal violence is not limited to undocumented Thai immigrants but also affects Thai American citizens and legal permanent residents.

Perpetuating Victimization with Efforts to Reduce Human Trafficking: a Call to Action for Massage Therapist Protection.

Human trafficking guised as massage therapy businesses is a highly successful business model that creates independent but related victims beyond the women and girls forced into sex work. Massage clinicians and the massage therapy profession are also negatively impacted by the trafficking massage business model with over 9,000 established illicit massage businesses marketing services alongside professional therapeutic massage businesses. Credential regulation efforts advocated for by various massage-related professional organizations and regulating agencies have fallen short in their purported intentions to protect massage therapists and trafficking victims. Massage industry advocates continue endorsing massage therapy as a branch of health care although health-care workers are not generally considered or treated as sex workers. Sexual harassment research in direct patient care disciplines, such as physical therapy and nursing, points to a high patient initiated incident rate and transdisciplinary, detrimental mental health outcomes for clinicians. Reporting and debriefing instances of sexual harassment inside of health-care organizations, covered by The Civil Rights Act of 1964, promotes a victim-centered perspective to support the well-being of past, current, and pending victims. The massage therapy workforce is comprised of mainly female sole proprietors, creating a double vulnerability in their potential to experience sexual harassment. This threat is compounded by little-to-no protective or supporting systems or networks for massage clinicians. The priorities of professional massage organizations to depend on credentialing and licensing as their primary efforts to fight human trafficking, seems more to perpetuate the current system/expectations, leaving individual massage therapists responsible for fighting or reeducation deviant sexualized behaviors. This critical commentary closes with a call to action aimed at professional massage organizations, regulators, and corporations to protect massage therapists through a unified position, supported in word, policy, and action, against sexual harassment, and unequivocally condemns professional massage devaluation and sexualization in all forms.

Detecting Human Trafficking: Automated Classification of Online Customer Reviews of Massage Businesses

Problem definition: Approximately 11,000 alleged illicit massage businesses (IMBs) exist across the United States hidden in plain sight among legitimate businesses. These illicit businesses frequently exploit workers, many of whom are victims of human trafficking, forced or coerced to provide commercial sex. Academic/practical relevance: Although IMB review boards like Rubmaps.ch can provide first-hand information to identify IMBs, these sites are likely to be closed by law enforcement. Open websites like Yelp.com provide more accessible and detailed information about a larger set of massage businesses. Reviews from these sites can be screened for risk factors of trafficking. Methodology: We develop a natural language processing approach to detect online customer reviews that indicate a massage business is likely engaged in human trafficking. We label data sets of Yelp reviews using knowledge of known IMBs. We develop a lexicon of key words/phrases related to human trafficking and commercial sex acts. We then build two classification models based on this lexicon. We also train two classification models using embeddings from the bidirectional encoder representations from transformers (BERT) model and the Doc2Vec model. Results: We evaluate the performance of these classification models and various ensemble models. The lexicon-based models achieve high precision, whereas the embedding-based models have relatively high recall. The ensemble models provide a compromise and achieve the best performance on the out-of-sample test. Our results verify the usefulness of ensemble methods for building robust models to detect risk factors of human trafficking in reviews on open websites like Yelp. Managerial implications: The proposed models can save countless hours in IMB investigations by automatically sorting through large quantities of data to flag potential illicit activity, eliminating the need for manual screening of these reviews by law enforcement and other stakeholders. Funding: This work was supported by the National Science Foundation [Grant 1936331]. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/msom.2023.1196 .

Interpretable models for the automated detection of human trafficking in illicit massage businesses

Sexually oriented establishments across the United States often pose as massage businesses and force victim workers into a hybrid of sex and labor trafficking, simultaneously harming the legitimate massage industry. Stakeholders with varied goals and approaches to dismantling the illicit massage industry all report the need for multi-source data to clearly and transparently identify the worst offenders and highlight patterns in behaviors. We utilize findings from primary stakeholder interviews with law enforcement, regulatory bodies, legitimate massage practitioners, and subject-matter experts from nonprofit organizations to identify data sources and potential indicators of illicit massage businesses (IMBs). We focus our analysis on data from open sources in Texas and Florida including customer reviews and business data from Yelp.com, the U.S. Census, and GIS files such as truck stop, highway, and military base locations. We build two interpretable prediction models, risk scores and optimal decision trees, to determine the risk that a given massage establishment is an IMB. The proposed multi-source data-based approach and interpretable models can be used by stakeholders at all levels to save time and resources, serve victim-workers, and support well informed regulatory efforts.

PENINGKATAN SKILL MAHASISWA KEBIDANAN MELALUI PELATIHAN BABY MASAGE SEBAGAI ALTERNATIF USAHA MANDIRI

Infancy is a golden period for baby growth and development so it needs special attention. Physical growth is influenced by internal and external factors. One of them is the technique of giving baby massage therapy. Monitoring and stimulating the growth and development of the baby is one of the duties of the midwife. This community service activity aims to increase insight, especially about complementary based holistic midwifery services, complementary based enterpreneurial skill and independence. The implementation of this community service activity is carried out through the following stage: 1) conducting webinars through zoom meetings in the form of education for final year students, namely exposure to basic knowledge of baby massage; 2) collaboration of midwifery students with a team of lecturers, baby massage business owners, and trainers in the implementation of baby massage; 3) individual stimulation for practice implementation of baby massage under the guidance of a team of lecturers; and 4) implementation of baby massage and direct education to mothers by trained final year students. Based on this communit service activity, it can be concluded that by increasing skills and understanding the importance of entrepreneurial spirit about baby massage as an additional insight for final year professional students.

Examining the Geography of Illicit Massage Businesses Hosting Commercial Sex and Sex Trafficking in the United States: The Role of Census Tract and City-Level Factors

Despite extensive theory and research on the geography of crime, few studies have examined the geography of commercial sex and sex trafficking through a criminological lens. As such, this study explores how social disorganization and routine activities help explain the geography of commercial sex venues, specifically illicit massage businesses (IMBs) that host commercial sex. Because IMBs have also been linked to sex trafficking, understanding which environmental contexts are conducive to their presence may also help identify sex trafficking premises. Findings from hierarchical logistic regression models indicate that both theories point to significant correlates of IMB placement in census tracts and cities, yet neither theory provides a sufficient explanation alone. Implications for future research and policy will be discussed.

Factors Influencing Recovery and Well-Being Among Asian Survivors of International Criminal Sex Trafficking in an Urban U.S. City.

Sex trafficking is serious form of gender-based violence that results in profound adverse health outcomes, yet one that is poorly understood. New York City is a major hub for sex trafficking, with a significant but unquantified number of victims originating from East Asian countries and trafficked via illicit massage businesses. Peer-reviewed studies among Asian survivors of international criminal sex trafficking do not exist. The aim of this study is to qualitatively examine the factors at various levels of influence that impact the recovery and reintegration process of Asian criminal sex trafficking survivors in the United States from the perspective of survivors and front-line service providers. The study was guided by community-based participatory research and trauma-informed approaches, leveraging a collaboration with a well-established service provider organization. Ten in-depth interviews were conducted between 2018 and 2019 with three Korean survivors and seven key informants who were anti-trafficking service providers working with East Asian clients. Data were analyzed using a grounded theory approach. Survivors and service providers vocalized factors at multiple levels that either facilitate or impede recovery and well-being. Levels of influence included structural (e.g., poverty/debt bondage, immigration status, limited English proficiency), cultural (e.g., fatalism, collectivism), institutional (e.g., lack of culturally appropriate, trauma-informed care), interpersonal (e.g., exploitation, social support), and individual (e.g., resilience). Stigma was a crosscutting factor that spanned all levels of influence. This study highlights the voices of survivors and front-line service providers to understand the lives of an under-researched population of Asian sex trafficking survivors. Ultimately, the root, structural causes of survivor marginalization need to be addressed, which stem from the intersection of class-, gender-, and race-related inequities. While survivors continue to experience exploitation and marginalization post-trafficking, they also carry an enormous amount of resilience that must be leveraged in their path to recovery from trauma.

Explaining the Use of Traditional Law Enforcement Responses to Human Trafficking Concerns in Illicit Massage Businesses

Explaining the Use of Traditional Law Enforcement Responses to Human Trafficking Concerns in Illicit Massage Businesses

Explaining the Use of Traditional Law Enforcement Responses to Human Trafficking Concerns in Illicit Massage Businesses

Traditional police tactics such as rapid response and reactive enforcement continue to dominate the police response against human trafficking despite knowledge about the challenges and potential harm of using these tactics. Through the case of illicit massage businesses (IMBs), this study examines why police continue to rely on strategies that have received little empirical support. In-depth interviews with police, prosecutors, and other practitioners indicate that citizen concerns about human trafficking trigger police responses such as reactive investigations, sting operations, and shutdowns of IMBs. While law enforcement officials recognize the limited effectiveness and potential harm of the current response, adapting how police respond to IMBs is challenged by perceptual and institutional barriers. With these findings, the study contributes to the research and theory on traditional policing and informs targeted and victim-centered anti-trafficking efforts.

Why are You Here? Modeling Illicit Massage Business Location Characteristics with Machine Learning

ABSTRACT Illicit massage businesses are a venue for sex and labor trafficking in the United States. Though many of their locations are made publicly available through online advertising, little is known about why they choose to locate where they do. In this work, we use inferential modeling to better understand the spatial distribution of illicit massage businesses within the U.S. Based on addresses web-scraped weekly from online advertisements over 6 months, we modeled illicit massage business prevalence at the census tract and county levels. We used publicly available data to characterize census tracts and counties, finding that the state in which they are located, distance to international airports, rent and income levels, racial composition, and religious presence all had significant relationships to illicit massage business presence. Illicit massage businesses operating with unethical labor practices and/or forced sexual services are not in line with just, peaceful, and inclusive societal goals, and the burdens of this industry disproportionately fall on women. While we emphasize that not all illicit massage businesses are settings of human trafficking, better understanding this industry is a key step toward better regulating it and protecting those harmed within it.

Pengelolaan Sport Massage Menjadi Unit Bisnis Program Studi Pendidikan Jasmani Kesehatan dan Rekreasi FIK Universitas Negeri Medan

ABSTRACT
 This research is a policy research that aims to study physical education, health and recreation, FIK Unimed in developing entrepreneurship independently and professionally, especially the sports massage clinic business. Supporting the implementation of BLU Unimed in managing a healthy business business with a sports massage clinic in the physical education, health and recreation (PJKR) study program. The hope of this activity is that many people are inspired by the existence of a sports massage clinic in the Physical Education, Health and Recreation (PJKR) study program, so that they are able to create a unique, professional and creative business needed by Students and Alumni of the Department of Physical Education, Health and Recreation (PJKR). Medan State University. This research activity is carried out by means of tutorials and discussions for theory, as well as practice/practice in groups and discussions for practical experience. The results of the research obtained are the Management of Sport Massage as a Business Unit for the Health and Recreation Physical Education Study Program, FIK State University of Medan obtained SOPs and guidelines for managing the Sport Massage Business Unit for the Health and Recreation Physical Education Study Program. The conclusion of the Sport Massage Management activity as a Business Unit for the Health and Recreation Physical Education Study Program at the State University of Medan provides various benefits of managing the entrepreneurial unit for both the Medan State University and the students of the Health and Recreation Physical Education Study Program.

The Double-Edged Sword of Health and Safety: COVID-19 and the Policing and Exclusion of Migrant Asian Massage Workers in North America

Migrant Asian massage workers in North America first experienced the impacts of COVID-19 in the final weeks of January 2020, when business dropped drastically due to widespread xenophobic fears that the virus was concentrated in Chinese diasporic communities. The sustained economic devastation, which began at least 8 weeks prior to the first social distancing and shelter in place orders issued in the U.S. and Canada, has been further complicated by a history of aggressive policing of migrant massage workers in the wake of the war against human trafficking. Migrant Asian massage businesses are increasingly policed as locales of potential illicit sex work and human trafficking, as police and anti-trafficking initiatives target migrant Asian massage workers despite the fact that most do not provide sexual services. The scapegoating of migrant Asian massage workers and criminalization of sex work have led to devastating systemic and interpersonal violence, including numerous deportations, arrests, and deaths, most notably the recent murder of eight people at three Atlanta-based spas. The policing of sex workers has historically been mobilized along fears of sexually transmitted disease and infection, and more recently, within the past two decades, around a moral panic against sex trafficking. New racial anxieties around the coronavirus as an Asian disease have been mobilized by the state to further cement the justification of policing Asian migrant workers along the axes of health, migration, and sexual labor. These justifications also solidify discriminatory social welfare regimes that exclude Asian migrant massage workers from accessing services on the basis of the informality and illegality of their work mixed with their precarious citizenship status. This paper draws from ethnographic participant observation and survey data collected by two sex worker organizations that work primarily with massage workers in Toronto and New York City to examine the double-edged sword of policing during the pandemic in the name of anti-trafficking coupled with exclusionary policies regarding emergency relief and social welfare, and its effects on migrant Asian massage workers in North America. Although not all migrant Asian massage workers, including those surveyed in this paper, provide sexual services, they are conflated, targeted, and treated as such by the state and therefore face similar barriers of criminalization, discrimination, and exclusion. This paper recognizes that most migrant Asian massage workers do not identify as sex workers and does not intend to label them as such or reproduce the scapegoating rhetoric used by law enforcement. Rather, it seeks to analyze how exclusionary attitudes and policies towards sex workers are transferred onto migrant Asian massage workers as well whether or not they provide sexual services.

Detecting Human Trafficking: Automated Classification of Online Customer Reviews of Massage Businesses

Detecting Human Trafficking: Automated Classification of Online Customer Reviews of Massage Businesses

Sport Entrepreneur (Sport Massage) untuk Peningkatan Kesejahteraan Masyarakat Desa Jungsemi Kecamatan Kangkung Kabupaten Kendal Tahun 2020

Jungsemi is a village that has a beautiful beach. The village is currently under development to become a jetski sports center. This village also has a takraw club. The objectives of community service are: (1) providing knowledge and theories about Sport Entrepreneurs and Injury Management with a Sport Massage Approach. (2) providing Sport massage skills for prevention, health and healing, and (3) providing skills and opportunities for residents to open a Sport massage business. The method used in this program are lecture, discussion, demonstration, and practice. Activity of handling injury with Sport Massage Approach for the People of Jungsemi Village, Kangkung District Kendal Regency, was held in the hall of Platar Village Hall with 35 people participating. The results of the activities are as follows: (1) residents of Jungsemi Village, Kangkung Subdistrict, Kendal District 2020, realize that Sport Entrepreneurs and massage in handling injuries with the Sports Massage approach, (2) Platar villagers are satisfied with the results of the training and expect training to be held at the stages more broadly about the knowledge of handling injury with sport massage

CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES OF BLIND MASSEURS IN INCREASING COMPETENCY THROUGH IMPLEMENTATION BUSINESS STANDARDS OF MASSAGE PARLOR

The purpose of this study was to analyze the challenges and opportunities of Indonesian blind masseurs in improving competency through the implementation of the business standards of massage parlor. The research method is a descriptive-qualitative, theoretical approach on competency in human resource management. Primary data sources selected by purposive sampling. The informants involved were representatives of blind massage entrepreneurs. Secondary data sources in this study is PERMENPAR No.20 of 2015 concerning Business Standards of Massage Parlor. Data analysis techniques by means of data triangulation. The results of the study indicate the challenges faced by the blind masseurs namely: 1) requirements of massage business licenses have not been fulfilled; 2) aspects of the organization, management, and human resources have not been maximized. Increasing the competency of the masseur as a traditional health practitioner is an innovation, and it can extend their opportunities to work in the center of public health and hospitals.
 
 Keywords: competency, standards, blind, masseur

Applying a Risk Management Framework to the Thai Massage Businesses

Applying a Risk Management Framework to the Thai Massage Businesses

Sport Massage Training and Development

Community Partnership Program "Sports Massage Training and development in Kelurahan Senga subdistrict of Luwu District" is a program to develop middle and lower community business. The purpose of this program is to (1) increase the quality and participation of the community, especially the partner in the development of sports massage business in the village Senga subdistrict Belopa District Luwu, (2) Unemployment reduction and Business opportunities in the field of sport so as to give a real contribution to the development of sports in this region mainly in the field of sports health. 
 The Problem solving offered in this research is with the help of training and enhancement of maassage sports both in terms of improving the quality of knowledge and skills, funding assistance for equipment and in terms of management and planning Business and socialization assistance to introduce sports massage in the community, especially in the area Senga Kecamatan Belopa District Luwu District. 
 Partners in this case still have some problems from various aspects such as management and business planning in the field of sports, quality aspects and knowledge about the sport massage is still minimal, the marketing aspect is still far from the word And capital that is still minimal to prepare the necessary tools for the implementation of the activities. 
 Implementation of the program planned in several stages. The stages are; (1) Program Introduction to the partner, (2) preparation of infrastructure and tools, (3) training in Sport massage, (4) Conducting management training and business plan, (5) Socialization of sports massage in related agencies and networking development, (6) Program assistance, as well as (7) Monitoring and evaluation. This activity is planned to be published in journals that have ISSN, print media and mass media, as well as additional external that has been established in the research proposal of service to the community Ministry of Research, Technology, and education High.