We study a class of pseudodifferential operators known as time-frequency localization operators, Anti-Wick operators, Gabor-Toeplitz operators or wave packets. Given a symbol a and two windows phi(1), phi(2), we investigate the multilinear mapping from (a, phi(1), phi(2)) epsilon S'(R-2d) x S(R-d) x S(R-d) to the localization operator A(a)(phi1,phi2) and we give sufficient and necessary conditions for A(a)(phi1,phi2) to be bounded or to belong to a Schatten class. Our results are formulated in terms of time-frequency analysis, in particular we use modulation spaces as appropriate classes for symbols and windows. (C) 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.