Caring Despite: Asian Migrant Massage and Sex Workers’ Ethnic Networks of Survival and Resistance

• In Event: 21061 - Section on Race, Gender, and Class Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 7: Labor and Workplace Dynamics

Abstract

This paper examines the circulation of hate and violence that Asian migrant massage and sex workers have experienced, especially at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and post-Atlanta spa shooting case, and how they survived and resisted these forces in their workplaces and homes. With special attention to the COVID-19 period and post-Atlanta massage parlor shooting period, I focus on the networked survival and resistance strategies to explore how Asian migrant massage and sex workers, stigmatized within and outside of ethnic enclaves, strengthened stickier ethnic networks to survive and resist. These networks served as a transformative force where workers formed self-acceptance, re-identification of one as a contributor and “giver” to the ethnic community (instead of a subject in need of “rescue”), especially at a time of crisis. In the face of hate and death, how workers’ took advantage of ethnic networks and community care for their well-being, survival, and resistance will be discussed.

Author

• Brittany Suh, CUNY-Graduate Center