My dissertation, titled “Multipolar Politics: How Transnational Migrant Activists Build Coalitions for Global Democracy,” studies Hong Konger-involved activism in five countries and their coalition efforts with other democracy movements, including Thai, Burmese, and Taiwanese, as well as domestic coalitions like the anti-Asian hate movement. From social media to street protests to the Congressional/ parliamentary buildings, I explore how these multiple political identities are re-interpreted and enacted within different interactional settings, where constellations of places and times define momentary relationships among migrant advocates. Over five years, I employed a global comparative ethnography, collecting observations from four cross-movement coalitions and twenty-two organizations across the United States, Canada, Japan, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom. My research is supplemented by sixty-five interviews and thirty years of archival material. Additionally, I compiled two original datasets: one on 177 Hong Konger organizations across 19 countries and another documenting 119 cases of transnational repression across 10 countries. The rich dataset enables a variety of ongoing and future research. This project is supported by the SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the University of Southern California.
 

I have published three related empirical articles and am preparing five additional manuscripts for publication. I recently published in American Behavioral Scientist, titled "Sowing Hate, Cultivating Loyalists: Mobilizing Repressive Nationalist Diasporas for Transnational Repression by the People's Republic of China Regime." This article integrates transnational repression, diaspora governance, and nationalism to conceptualize the idea of 'repressive nationalist diaspora.' I argue that the Chinese Communist Party regime uses cultural and nationalist boundaries to territorialize and orientalize the "Chinese identity," antagonizing dissidents at home and abroad as separatists and 'foreign influenced.' This low-cost cultural strategy encourages emigrants who are patriotic to their home country to engage in repressive behaviors within a broader network of emigrants, thereby aiding the autocrat in controlling the 'voice' abroad among Hong Kongers, Tibetans, Uyghurs, Taiwanese, and mainland Chinese. The paper was selected to be featured at the XX ISA World Congress of Sociology representing the American Sociological Association (The Toolkit of Emerging Autocrats Section) in 2023.
 

Additionally, my other work-in-progress manuscripts, "How Should 'We' Talk About 'We'," "Dividing Asians," and "We, the Hong Kongers?" have been selected for presentation at sections on culture, intersectionality, and political sociology at the American Sociological Association (ASA) conference.

My studies provide empirical insights while also raising questions about how and when institutional categories become interconnected in everyday life that exhibit domination as well as resilience. Some of my earlier work has examined the relationality of places, family, and social movements. “From Helmets to Face Masks,” examined how Hongkongers in the US have maintained their commitment to their homeland from the 2019 Hong Kong Anti-Extradition Bill movement to the global pandemic. “Leaving the Homeland Again for My Family’s Future,” explores how the future-making processes shaped by broader political crises in pre- and post-colonial Hong Kong have continually shaped and reshaped family endeavors as transnational migrants move in and out of the homeland.

My upcoming book project will integrate these empirical and conceptual works, synthesizing an approach to deepen the understanding of how broader socio-historical and geopolitical power dynamics are compressed into articulations that create various forms of relationality among people and their collective lives.