Margaret M. Chin

Margaret M. Chin is Professor of Sociology at Hunter College/CUNY and CUNY Graduate Center. She was born and raised in New York City and is herself a child of Chinese immigrant parents. Prof. Chin received her B.A. from Harvard University and Ph.D. from Columbia University. 

Prof. Chin is the author of two award winning books. Sewing Women: Immigrants and the New York City Garment Industry (Columbia University Press, 2005/15), an illuminating ethnography on the Chinese, Korean, Mexican and Ecuadorian garment workers, was honored by the Coalition for Labor Union Women (CLUW) and received an honorable mention from the Thomas and Znaniecki Book Award committee of the International Migration Section of the American Sociological Association. Her second book, Stuck: Why Asian Americans Don't Reach the Top of the Corporate Ladder (NYU Press, 2020), an interview analysis of how factors such as race and trust can hold second generation Asian Americans back, was the winner for the Association of American Publishers 2021 PROSE (Professional and Scholarly Excellence) Book Award in the Business, Finance, and Management category. She is currently working on a third book with sociologist Syed Ali, tentatively titled, The Peer Effect: Building Better Schools and Better Workplaces. 

Prof. Chin's honors include an American Sociological Association's Minority Fellows Award, a National Science Foundation Dissertation Grant, a Social Science Research Councils Postdoctoral Fellowship, and a Woodrow Wilson Foundation/Institute for Citizens & Scholars Career Enhancement Fellowship. She was also vice president of the Eastern Sociological Society (2015-16).

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. Her specialties include immigration, family, work, Asian Americans, race/ethnicity, and children of immigrants.

Press coverage:

USA Today 2022 Asian women are shut out of leadership at America's top companies. 
MarketWatch 2021 Asian Americans are Still Viewed As Forever Foreign
Washington Post 2021 Senator Grassley congratulates Korean American judge on her work ethic. Some Asain Americans say it echoes divisive stereotypes.
Gardian 2021 The forgotten nieghborhood: how New York's Chinatown survived 9/11 to face a new crisis
Washington Post 2021 The Model Minority Myth Hurts Asian Americans and even leads to violence
Bloomberg Businessweek 2021 A Sociologist Explains Why AsAm sense a limit at Work
Today.com 2021 What is the Bamboo Ceiling?
Vox 2022 The Women's Work of the Pandemic
Inside Higher Ed Nov 2019 Higher ed needs more Affirmative Action not Less
Medium 2019 Ten Reasons not to Fall for the Asian American Penalty Trap in Admissions
The Atlantic Jun 2018 What's Going On with NYC's Elite Public High Schools ?

Sites to Peruse

• Tenement Talk - Chinatown - 9/11 and the end of the Garment Industry 

• One to One with Sheryl McCarthy October 1, 2018

• Unionizing Women Garment Workers panel at the NY Historical Society