Jane Choi

Research interests: Culture, ethnicity/race/nation, migration, inequality, Asia and Asian America, qualitative methods. 

Bio: Jane Choi is a PhD student in Sociology. She is largely interested in the twofold question of how institutions shape our day-to-day experiences and how we use our networks to play out our institutional lives. She has researched legacy and first-generation students at Ivy League colleges, families who are served by Head Start and Early Head Start programs, and parents of pre-K and kindergarten-age children in the New York City School District.

Previously, Jane worked as a Research Assistant in the Family Well-Being and Children’s Development policy area at MDRC and received a B.A. in Sociology from Columbia University. Jane was born in Seoul, S. Korea, grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, and received her early training as a researcher in New York City.

Research summary:  In my M.Phil. thesis, I examine how second-generation Korean Americans from different class backgrounds negotiate what it means to be “authentically Korean.” Via in-depth life history interviews, I find that upper-middle class Korean Americans invest class resources in the cultivation of transnational cultural capital, which they use to define themselves, but not others, as “authentically Korean.” Working-class Korean Americans, on the other hand, base claims to ethnic authenticity on diasporic struggle and membership in coethnic communities established through these shared experiences – they draw boundaries against upper-middle class Korean Americans, whom they perceive as exempted from these experiences by their class status. In my dissertation, I plan to continue theorizing the concept of ethnic authenticity by investigating how the growing power of sending nation-states shapes diasporic identity-making and the strength of ethnic boundaries across national borders.

This information is accurate as of the affiliate year indicated. (last updated 12.28.2025)