Hong, Yeeun and Heeyoung Lee (equal authorship). "Selectivity, Assimilation, and the Limits of Education: Immigrant Mortality Trajectories Among Asian and Hispanic Populations in the US." Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, forthcoming.
Research Interests
Im/migration; Race and Ethnicity; Gender and Sexuality; Families; Asian and Asian American Studies; Qualitative Methods
Dissertation
My dissertation, "Paper Trails to the Altar: The Impact of U.S. Immigration Policies on Asian Migrants' Intimate Relationships," examines how Asian migrants navigate intimate relationships when marriage represents both genuine partnership and legal security. Drawing on 70 in-depth interviews with Asian migrants, their intimate partners, and community stakeholders in the U.S. during an intensified enforcement, this research reveals how structural power operates within the most intimate spaces of everyday life. Specifically, I explore how legal status shapes intimate relationships across the full legal status continuum — revealing what makes marriage possible as a strategy for legal security, what complicates it, and what forecloses it as an option altogether.
I am currently conducting in-depth interviews with Asian migrants, their intimate partners, and relevant community stakeholders!
Publications
Dreby, Joanna, and Yeeun Hong. "'But We Don't Talk about It': Silencing and Legal Precarity among First-, 1.5- and Second-Generation Asian Immigrants." Social Problems, September 12, 2026, spag061. DOI.
Lee, Eunju, Joanna Dreby, Yeeun Hong, and Tola Seng. "Childhood Immigration Enforcement Exposure and Young Adults' Anxiety: A Mixed Methods Study." Children and Youth Services Review, vol. 172 (May 2025): 108276. DOI.
Work in Progress
Hong, Yeeun. "The Sexual Dimension of Liminal Legality: Intimacy and Family Formation among LGBTQ+ Asian Immigrants in the U.S." Manuscript in Preparation.
Hong, Yeeun, Jane Jia-Yin Wang, and Angie Y. Chung. "Rethinking Global Hierarchies: Young South Koreans' Post-COVID Perceptions of the United States, China, and South Korea." Manuscript in Preparation.
Hong, Yeeun, Katelyn HJ Kim, and Paul Y. Chang. "Assimilation Disrupted? How Migrant Wives in South Korea Negotiate Assimilation through Transnational Ties." Manuscript in Preparation.