Dr. Jia-Lin Liu, PhD, MSW, is a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Social Work at California State University, Los Angeles (Cal State LA).

Her forthcoming book, Far from the Model Minority: Face, Class, and Transnational Chinese Families (University of California Press, August 4, 2026), examines how dominant theories of social class and mobility fall short in capturing the lived realities of immigrants, particularly Chinese immigrants navigating precarious legal status in the United States.

Centering five undocumented and mixed-status Chinese immigrant families in New York City and their sending communities in Fuzhou, China, Dr. Liu challenges the “model minority” narrative by revealing patterns of multigenerational structural exclusion. She shows how families develop mobility strategies shaped by the cultural imperative of “face”—the need to gain, preserve, and protect family honor—and how these strategies are often undermined by racialized barriers and legal precarity in the United States.

Dr. Liu’s research bridges immigration, race and ethnicity, and social inequality, with a focus on transnational Chinese families. She is also expanding this work into public-facing and visual storytelling, including photography, documentary, and film.

At Cal State LA, she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in social work.

Prior to her doctoral studies, she spent over six years as a child welfare social worker at the Center for Family Life in Sunset Park, where she provided clinical services to immigrant families and helped launch the Sunset Scholars tutoring cooperative. She holds an MSW from Columbia University and a BS in Molecular and Cellular Biology from Vanderbilt University.