Yung-Ying Chang
I am a PhD
candidate in the Department of Sociology at Rutgers University–New Brunswick. My research examines how movement organizations and other mesolevel sites mediate macrolevel forces such as geopolitics and migration regimes, and in doing so shape what individual and organizational actors can and cannot do politically. My dissertation has received an ASA DDRIG, and my related work has been published in Nations and Nationalism.
Scroll down to see my research
Scroll down to see my research
01. Dissertation Project
American Sociological Association Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant (ASA DDRIG) Recipient
My dissertation examines how the range of political action is made available to migrants. I take a mesolevel approach that foregrounds the intersection of geopolitics and domestic political structure to study a cohort of US-based Chinese activists who mobilize across US progressive and diaspora Chinese pro-democracy politics. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, in-depth interviews, and organizational publications, complemented by protest event data, I show (1) that the field of contention often collapses critique of one state into allegiance to the other and leaves positions that challenge both states contested from either side, and (2) that, despite these constraints, the cohort navigates its positions, contests field rules, responds to multiple and often contradictory environmental demands, and adapts organizationally to gain tactical flexibility in mobilizing Chinese international students and other migrants into its politics.
My central argument is that an organization’s position in a field of contention shapes the range of political action available to actors who join it. The project extends political sociology’s polarization research from elite and mass arenas into movement fields, bridges diaspora and immigrant studies of political participation, and offers an account of Chinese contentious space as it emerges within and against transnational constraints.
02. The Formosan Black Bear and Taiwanese Nationalism
Publication:
Chang, Yung-Ying, and
John Chung-En Liu. 2026. “The Formosan Black Bear and Taiwanese Nationalism.” Nations
and Nationalism, Online First. https://doi.org/10.1111/nana.70092. [Link] [PDF]
My co-author and I examine nationalism in settler-colonial Taiwan amid China’s colonial claim to sovereignty. We show how the Formosan black bear became a national symbol of resistance to Chinese irredentism across three cumulative stages: early-2000s symbolic competition with China’s giant pandas; mid-2010s diffusion through branding, commodification, and political advocacy; and post-2017 politicization amid intensifying cross-strait tensions. Yet Han Taiwanese often attribute bear deaths to Indigenous communities and prioritize bear conservation, whose public popularity is partly associated with the bear’s national symbolism, over Indigenous communities’ everyday experiences of living with bears. We show that Taiwanese nationalism has anticolonial origins and continues as anti-hegemonic resistance, while suggesting that this bear symbolism may subordinate Indigenous perspectives in public discussions of human–bear conflicts. The paper offers a relational account of nationalism’s resistant and oppressive possibilities.
My co-author and I examine nationalism in settler-colonial Taiwan amid China’s colonial claim to sovereignty. We show how the Formosan black bear became a national symbol of resistance to Chinese irredentism across three cumulative stages: early-2000s symbolic competition with China’s giant pandas; mid-2010s diffusion through branding, commodification, and political advocacy; and post-2017 politicization amid intensifying cross-strait tensions. Yet Han Taiwanese often attribute bear deaths to Indigenous communities and prioritize bear conservation, whose public popularity is partly associated with the bear’s national symbolism, over Indigenous communities’ everyday experiences of living with bears. We show that Taiwanese nationalism has anticolonial origins and continues as anti-hegemonic resistance, while suggesting that this bear symbolism may subordinate Indigenous perspectives in public discussions of human–bear conflicts. The paper offers a relational account of nationalism’s resistant and oppressive possibilities.
03. Emotions, Nationalist Contention, and Cultural Consumption
How does nationalist contention emerge through cosmopolitan cultural consumption? Drawing on interviews with K-pop fans and observation of two online fan groups, I specify the conditions under which cultural and national emotions meet in an affective rupture that draws fans into nationalist contention, and show how the process varies with a group's social proximity to where K-pop is produced. (Under review)