About

Min Zhou is a Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Asian American Studies at UCLA, holding the Walter and Shirley Wang Endowed Chair in U.S.-China Relations & Communications. She is also the Director of the UCLA Asia Pacific Center. Dr. Zhou is a member of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her research focuses on migration and development, race and ethnicity, Chinese diaspora studies, urban sociology, and the sociology of Asia and Asian America. She has published extensively in these areas, including over 20 books and more than 230 journal articles and book chapters. Her notable works include 'Chinatown: The Socioeconomic Potential of an Urban Enclave' and 'Contemporary Chinese America: Immigration, Ethnicity, and Community Transformation.' Dr. Zhou has held academic leadership roles, including serving as the founding chair of UCLA's Asian American Studies Department and taking a leave of absence to serve as the Tan Lark Sye Chair Professor and Head of Sociology Division at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. She is actively involved in various scholarly organizations, serving on editorial boards and research associations, contributing significantly to the fields of migration, ethnicity, and Asian American studies.

Research topics

• Social Science
• Sociology
• Political Science
• Demographic economics
• Law
• Economic growth
• Geography
• Economics
• Demography
• Gender studies
• Economic geography
• Development economics
• Anthropology

Selected publications

• Chromosome-level Genome Assembly and Annotation of the bighead beaked sandfish (Gonorynchus abbreviatus)

  Scientific Data · 2026-04-10

  articleOpen access

  Gonorynchus abbreviatus (bighead beaked sandfish), is a demersal fish inhabiting the deep waters of the Northwest Pacific for which genomic resource have been limited. Here, we assembled a chromosome-level genome using DNBSEQ, PacBio, and Hi-C sequencing technologies. The final 609.20 Mb assembly achieved a scaffold N50 of 22.33 Mb and was anchored onto 27 chromosomes, with 99.07% completeness based on BUSCO assessment. Repetitive sequences comprised 32.88% of the genome, mainly DNA transposons (12.33%). We identified 22,396 protein-coding genes, of which 21,429 (95.68%) were functionally annotated. This high-quality genome constitutes a valuable resource for investigating the evolutionary history and genetic mechanisms of G. abbreviatus.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Sending Money Home: Understanding the Social Dynamics of Migrant Remittances

  Annual Review of Sociology · 2026-04-15

  articleSenior author

  This article synthesizes major strands of scholarship on migrant remittances, addressing the central question of what motivates migrants to remit and how these motivations vary across social, temporal, and structural contexts. We review classical and neoclassical theories, the migration–development nexus, and the New Economics of Labor Migration, highlighting analytical limits in their economistic assumptions. We then examine sociological and transnational approaches that reconceptualize remittances as socially embedded practices shaped by gendered obligations, kinship norms, moral economies, sending-state regimes, and digital mediation. Building on this literature, we outline a multilevel sociological framework that situates remittance behavior at the intersections of microlevel familial subjectivities, mesolevel community expectations and transnational networks, and macrolevel political–economic structures. This framework underscores the recursive relationship between the causes and consequences of remitting, illustrating how remittances simultaneously sustain households, reshape social relations, and reproduce state and global dependencies, thereby challenging linear models prevalent in development discourse.

  PublisherDOI

• A Near-Telomere-to-Telomere Genome Assembly of the Spotted Seal (Phoca largha) Reveals Genomic Architecture Underlying Skin and Fur Adaptation

  International Journal of Molecular Sciences · 2026-03-13

  articleOpen access1st author

  The spotted seal (Phoca largha) is an ice-associated pinniped in the Northwest Pacific and is a subject of conservation concern under increasing environmental and anthropogenic pressures; however, genomic studies have been constrained by the absence of a high-quality reference genome. Here, we present a near-telomere-to-telomere (near-T2T), gap-free genome assembly of P. largha spanning 2.39 Gb and comprising 16 chromosome-length sequences, with a scaffold N50 of 184.39 Mb and high completeness (99.34% complete BUSCOs). Compared with the previous chromosome-level assembly, the new genome improves contiguity and gene-space completeness. Comparative analyses across 20 carnivoran species resolve P. largha as sister to Phoca vitulina with an estimated divergence time of ~2.1 Ma. Branch-site positive-selection analyses and gene-family evolution analyses identify lineage-associated changes, and enrichment results motivate focused investigation of integument-related gene families. Targeted analyses of keratin (KRT) and matrix metalloproteinase (MMP) families reveal contrasting chromosomal organisation and evolutionary dynamics: KRTs form large chromosomal clusters with broadly conserved synteny across Carnivora but lineage-dependent remodelling within clusters, whereas MMPs are dispersed and display largely conserved orthologous correspondence. This high-quality genome provides a high-quality resource for pinniped comparative genomics and for elucidating the genomic architecture of skin and fur adaptation.

  PublisherDOI

• The transformation of Asian America: immigration, racialization, and the changing landscape of Asian American studies

  Ethnic and Racial Studies · 2026-03-23 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• An integrated health belief model and protection motivation theory approach to understanding herpes zoster vaccination intention among older adults in China

  Vaccine · 2026-03-31

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Reflecting on the theory of segmented assimilation: an introduction

  Ethnic and Racial Studies · 2025-01-08 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This symposium draws from a panel of the Section on International Migration (IM) at the 2024 American Sociological Association (ASA) Annual Meeting.As a dual celebration of the 30th anniversary of the ASA IM Section and publication of segmented assimilation theory, the panel's theme was to reflect on segmented assimilation theory and three decades of immigrant integration research.Four authors offer their critical commentaries on the theory with a rejoinder by the theory's original authors.This introduction underscores some of the most significant ways in which the theory has stimulated intellectual debate and empirical research on the study of contemporary immigrants and their offspring.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Segmented assimilation: some reflections on a three-decade concept

  Ethnic and Racial Studies · 2025-01-09 · 8 citations

  articleSenior authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The Construction and Application of Rural Teachers’ Educational Research Literacy Indicator System in the Context of Deep Learning

  Applied Mathematics and Nonlinear Sciences · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Primary and secondary school teachers are an important group in the development and reform of rural basic education, and the study of rural teachers’ educational research literacy can help improve the quality of rural education. This paper designs an evaluation model of rural teachers’ educational research literacy based on PSO-BP combination algorithm. The BP neural network and particle swarm algorithm are coupled, and the PSO algorithm is used to replace the gradient descent method in the BP neural network to repeatedly optimize the combination of weights and parameters of the BP neural network model until the fitness of the solution is no longer reduced. On this basis, the BP neural network is then used to further precisely optimize the obtained network parameters until the optimal network parameters are searched, and the precise optimal parameter combinations are obtained. The evaluation system of rural teachers’ educational research literacy was constructed by principal component analysis, and three common factors, scientific research ability, scientific research awareness and scientific research ethics, were extracted, and the weights assigned to 26 indicators were calculated according to the factor loadings. In the performance experiment, with the same population size and number of iterations, this paper’s algorithm for R 2 is 0.9991, which is higher than the three baseline models of 0.9834, 0.9875, and 0.9987. With the optimal population size and number of iterations, the regression coefficient is the closest to 1, and the model output values of the test set samples have the smallest relative error to the true value, and the results of the grading are completely consistent. This study provides a scientific reference for accurately assessing the educational research literacy of rural teachers.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Integrating environmental DNA and species distribution modeling to identify suitable habitat for the critically endangered Chinese sturgeon in the East China Sea

  Journal of Environmental Management · 2025-12-16

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Navigating restricted social rights: networked individualism as a coping mechanism for undocumented Chinese immigrants in the United States

  Ethnic and Racial Studies · 2025-09-22 · 3 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Carl L. Bankston

  Tulane University

  32 shared

• Alejandro Portes

  14 shared

• Jennifer Lee

  University of California, Irvine

  13 shared

• John Logan

  John Brown University

  8 shared

• Glenn C. Loury

  Brown University

  8 shared

• Wang Jun

  Texas A&M University

  7 shared

• Hong Liu

  University of California, Davis

  7 shared

• Dwaine Plaza

  Oregon State University

  6 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Sociology

  University of California, Los Angeles

  1992

• M.A., Sociology

  University of California, Los Angeles

  1988

• B.A., Sociology

  University of California, Los Angeles

  1985

Awards & honors

• Member of the National Academy of Sciences of the United Sta…
• Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences