I am currently a third-year undergraduate majoring in Sociology and Asian American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.

I study birth tourism, hierarchy of citizenships, immigration, transnationalism, and the family in the United States, Hong Kong, and China. My methods are primarily qualitative and comparative historical.

As a Mellon Mays Fellow, my research argues that to understand birth tourism and the mechanisms that drive birth tourists of origin, we must examine the historical development of distinct migration systems, the value of citizenships in the global context and the ongoing relations between sending and receiving sites. Through comparative analysis of two birth tourism patterns, I show how political institutions and local “tour” businesses in China, Hong Kong, and the United States systematically organize birth tourism as a form of delayed migration.

My goal is to apply directly into a Ph.D. program in Sociology. I plan to study the impact of birth tourism through the value of citizenship, transnational mobility and return-migration pattern from China to Hong Kong and the United States.

Finally, I aim to diversify the professorate through my passion for teaching and researching. I aspire to become a college professor in Sociology/Asian American Studies because not only can I pay it forward to students in the future as my mentors have done, I can also feed my curiosity through continual research.

Research Interests

• Globalization
• Citizenship
• Family
• Immigration
• Transnationalism
• Social Mobility
• Hong Kong & China