Margaret M. Chin joined the Sociology Department in September 2001. Her research interests focus on new immigrants, working poor families, race and ethnicity, and Asian Americans. She is currently working on a number of projects. They include: research on how Asian ethnic media is used by first and second generation Asians and Asian Americans; a project on the status of low wage immigrant workers and where they turn to for work and assistance during this recession; and a project on differences and similarities among Brooklyn’s Chinatown, Flushing’s Asiantown and Manhattan’s Chinatown. Professor Chin uses qualitative and comparative methods in her research.

Professor Chin was a Social Science Research Council Post Doctoral Fellow in International Migration, a Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation Junior Faculty Career Grant Recipient and a Gender Equity Project Associate. She has taught The Sociology of the Family, The Second Generation Experience of Asians, Latinos and Blacks, the Graduate Social Research course in qualitative research methods, and a CUNY Honors College Seminar – The Peopling of New York.

She received her BA in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University and her MA and PhD in Sociology from Columbia University.

Sites to Peruse

• The class web site of Spring 2008’s Honors College seminar – The Peopling of New York
• Interviews of myself and other GEP fellows on the importance of women in research careers
• New York Times article on ethnic differences in plastic surgery
• A Chinese news spot

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.