Margaret M. Chin
Margaret M. Chin joined the Sociology Department of Hunter College in September of 2001 and in 2006 became a member of the faculty of the Graduate Center.
Margaret M. Chin was born and raised in New York City and is herself a child of Chinese immigrant parents. She is currently an Associate Professor of Sociology at Hunter College and the Graduate Center. Margaret received her BA from Harvard University and her PhD from Columbia University. She is the author of two books - the forthcoming, Stuck: Why Asian Americans Don't Reach the Top of the Corporate Ladder, an analysis of the need to understand how factors such as racism, a lack of trust and having few sponsors, can hold second generation Asian Americans back, and the award winning Sewing Women: Immigrants and the NYC Garment Industry, an illuminating ethnography on the Chinese and Korean garment sectors. At Hunter College, she is currently a Faculty Associate of both the Asian American Studies Center, and the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute. She is also a member of the CUNY Asian American / Asian Research Institute.
Margaret’s honors include an American Sociological Association’s Minority Fellows Award, a NSF Dissertation Grant, a Social Science Research Councils Post Doctoral Fellowship in International Migration, and a Woodrow Wilson Foundation Fellowship for junior faculty. She was the Vice President of the Eastern Sociological Society from 2015-2016 and currently serves on the Contexts review board. Her specialties include immigration, family, work, Asian Americans, and children of immigrants.
Email: mmchin@hunter.cuny.edu Twitter: @ProfMChin Phone: 212-772-4842
Sites to Peruse
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The Class Website of Spring 2020's Macaulay Honors Seminar - The People of New York
- Unionizing Women Garment Workers panel at the NY Historical Society
Publications
Her publications include, Sewing Women: Immigrants in the New York City Garment Industry (Columbia University Press 2005) which received an honorable mention from the Thomas and Znaniecki Book Award committee of the International Migration Section of the ASA. She published "Moving On: Chinese Garment Workers after 9/11" in Wounded City, edited by Nancy Foner (Russell Sage 2005) and, “From the Field: Asian and Latino Immigrants in the New York City Garment Industry,” a chapter in Researching Migration: Stories from the Field (SSRC 2007). For her publications on garment workers, she was honored by the Chinese section of the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW). Prof Chin has also published articles with Katherine Newman, "High Stakes, Hard Choices," in the The American Prospect, Summer 2002, and "High Stakes: Time Poverty, Testing and the Children of the Working Poor," in the Journal of Qualitative Sociology, Spring 2003
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Recent Publications:
"The Backbone of Chinatown: Chinese Women and the Garment Industry 1950-2001." in Our Voices, Our Histories: Asian American and Pacific Islander Women. Edited by Shirley Hune and Gail Nomura. NYU Press 2020.
"Chinatown, the Garment and Restaurant Industries, and Labor." with Ken Guest. In Labor's City . Edited by Josh Freeman. New York: Columbia University Press 2019.
"Beneath Each Layer of Cloth: Chinese Women in the New York City Garment Industry", a chapter in The Routledge Handbook of Asian American Studies, edited by Cindy I-Fen Cheng, Routledge 2017.
"Tales from the Field: Research Methods and Approaches to Studying Community" John J. Chin, Margaret M. Chin, Tarry Hum, Peter Kwong, and Zai Liang. CUNY Forum 2017 Winter.
"Navigating the Road to Work: Second Generation Asian American Finance Workers." With Hyein Lee. Harvard Kennedy School. Asian American Public Policy Review. Vol 26. 2016
"Asian American Second Generation, Bamboo Ceilings, and Affirmative Action," Contexts, V15 N1 pp 70-73. 2016.
Min Zhou, Margaret M. Chin, and Rebecca Y Kim. The Transformation of Chinese American Communities: New York vs. Los Angeles. In New York and Los Angeles: The Uncertain Future edited by Halle and Beveridge. Oxford University Press. 2013.
Additional Podcasts, Articles, Op Eds and Media Coverage
December 2019 Think About It Podcast with Uli Baer Affirmative Action: Affirmative Action After Harvard's Win https://www.ulrichbaer.com/margaretchin
November 2019 Inside Higher Education Higher Education Needs More Affirmative Action, Not Less Opinion https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2019/11/12/recent-case-harvard-university-reinforces-need-holistic-admissions-opinion
October 2019 The Thought Project Podcast with Tanya Domi ep 68
https://www.gc.cuny.edu/News/All-News/Detail?id=53092
"Here are Ten Reasons not to Fall for the Asian American Penalty Trap" with Oiyan Poon, Janelle Wong and Jerry Park, Medium Feb 2019. http://bit.ly/NoAsAmPenalty
"The Peer Effect" with Syed Ali, The Daily News. Feb 2019. http://bit.ly/PeerEffect
December 2018 The Thought Project Podcast with Tanya Domi https://gc.cuny.edu/News/All-News/Detail?id=47521&fbclid=IwAR1uTJ8fdhZnkfB0MjxKBBSYvYkuE4VzNELs9tslLdIfZcnA0ZO-jUBxBVU
"What's Going On with New York's Elite Public High Schools?" with Syed Ali. The Atlantic. June 14, 2018. http://bit.ly/SHSATElitePublic
"Merit and the Admissions Debates at Harvard University and Stuyvesant High School" with Syed Ali. The Society Pages. June 27, 2018. http://bit.ly/MeritAdmDebate
"The Importance of the Deferred Action Childhood Arrivals Policy (DACA) Guest Posts with Hyein Lee. Contexts Blog. Sept 2017. http://bit.ly/ContextsDACA
Asian American and the First 100 Days of Trump, Margaret M. Chin and John Chin.
Roosevelt House Faculty Journal Jan 20, 2017. http://bit.ly/Trump100DaysJChinMChin
Prof Chin discusses parenting and high achieving children on Sinovision. March 3, 2014
Prof Chin on at 17:57; 18:35; and 19:50 http://video.sinovision.net/?id=18408
An article about the NAACP filing a complaint against NYC Public specialized high schools quotes Prof Chin Nov 28, 2012
Newspaper in Barcelona quotes Prof Chin on the importance of Asian American political participation. Aug 20, 2012
Chinese Television (SinoVision) spot discussing Chinese History, 1882 exclusion and US House apology for the exclusion. Aug 13, 2012
Prof Chin on at 1:39 and 3:47;
http://video.sinovision.net/?id=7692
Chinese Television (SinoVision) spot where Prof Chin comments on the suicide of Pvt Danny Chen starting at 3:40. May 29, 2012
http://video.sinovision.net/?id=6606
Prof Chin is quoted in the World Journal, a Chinese Language Newspaper on Jeremy Lin's fame and influence on Chinese American parenting Feb 27, 2012
Prof Chin is interviewed in a special feature on Chinatown, Ten Years after 9/11 Sept 2011
http://video.sinovision.net/?id=3318
Prof Chin discusses family structures among immigrant families and the prevalence of adult children living with their families. Feb 2011
http://www.more.com/reinvention-money/money/mom-dad-im-home
A New York Times article on plastic surgery quotes Prof Chin on the prevalence of plastic surgery in the Asian community Feb. 19, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/19/nyregion/19plastic.html?_r=0