Fellowship / Fellows

Pei-Chia Lan

  • 2011–2012
  • Social Sciences
  • Radcliffe-Harvard Yenching Institute Fellow
  • National Taiwan University (Taiwan)
Headshot of Pei-Chia Lan
Photo by Tony Rinaldo

This information is accurate as of the fellowship year indicated for each fellow.

Pei-Chia Lan is a professor of sociology at National Taiwan University. Her fields of specialty include gender, work, and migration. She is the author of Global Cinderellas: Migrant Domestics and Newly Rich Employers in Taiwan (Duke University Press, 2006). On the basis of fieldwork with Filipina and Indonesian domestics and interviews with Taiwanese employers, Lan provides a nuanced look at how global inequalities are manifested in private households. She characterizes migrant domestics as “global Cinderellas” who seek an escape from poverty at home only to find themselves treated as disposable labor abroad.

While in residence at Radcliffe, Lan will explore the effects of globalization on the experience of parenting and how these effects, varying by class and gender, contribute to social inequities. Based on in-depth interviews conducted in Taiwan and Boston, she looks at three major global processes: worldwide circulation of ideologies that shaped the changing notions of parenthood and childhood in Taiwan; the restructuring of the global economy in recent years, including the flows of capital and labor, that influence family relations, the care economy, and parenting practices in Taiwan; and how parents maneuver cross-border movements as strategies to advance children’s educational opportunities. Lan will explore how Taiwanese and Chinese immigrants negotiate cultural differences in the practice of childrearing and how they parent transnationally.

Lan received a PhD in sociology from Northwestern University. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California at Berkeley and a Fulbright scholar at New York University. Her book won a 2007 Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship (Book) Award from the Sex and Gender Section of the American Sociological Association and a 2007 ICAS Book Prize for the best study in the field of social sciences from the International Convention of Asian Scholars.

Our 2023–2024 Fellows

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