ORCID

https://orcid.org/0009-0008-0506-3226

Date of Award

Summer 2026

Language

English

Embargo Period

7-23-2026

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

College/School/Department

Department of Sociology

Program

Sociology

First Advisor

Ronald Jacobs

Committee Members

Angie Chung, Barbara Sutton, Brandon Gorman

Keywords

Higher education, transnational knowledge production, gender, migration, precarity, ambivalence

Subject Categories

Educational Sociology | Family, Life Course, and Society | Gender and Sexuality | Migration Studies | Race and Ethnicity | Sociology | Sociology of Culture | Theory, Knowledge and Science

Abstract

Science is often imagined as a borderless profession in which knowledge, careers, and talent circulate freely across national boundaries. Yet scientific careers remain embedded within institutions that correspond to immigration regimes, geopolitical tensions, and unequal social structures. Drawing on 32 in-depth interviews with early-career Chinese women scientists trained in the U.S., this dissertation examines how globally mobile scientists navigate decisions about careers, migration, and everyday life between China and the U.S.

Rather than treating migration as a series of discrete decisions driven by labor markets or state policies, this dissertation argues that career and life orientations are fundamentally intertwined through respondents’ pursuit of a meaningful life. It advances two central arguments. First, as transnational mobility becomes an expected feature of professional careers rather than an exceptional event, ambivalence becomes an inevitable and enduring condition. Respondents continually negotiate professional opportunities, family obligations, intimate relationships, and geopolitical changes while remaining open to multiple possible futures. Second, persistent precarity generates a continual process of contingency planning. Rather than serving as a backup for unexpected outcomes, contingency plans become the plan, respondents’ primary mode of navigating uncertainty, as new forms of precarity produce new contingencies that require continual revision. For Chinese women scientists, this dynamic is particularly prominent because scientific careers unfold at the intersection of gendered expectations, immigration regimes, academic labor markets, and family responsibilities.

By centering scientists’ lived experiences, this dissertation contributes to the sociology of knowledge, migration, and gender. More broadly, it argues that when mobility becomes institutionalized as the norm, ambivalence and contingency cease to be temporary conditions and instead become defining features of transnational professional life.

License

This work is licensed under the University at Albany Standard Author Agreement.

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