Milly Yang is a PhD Candidate in Sociology at Yale University. As a sociologist and social demographer, she examines how key institutions—immigration policy, employers, and the family—structure opportunities and exclusions across national borders. Much of this work lies at the intersection of immigration, family demography, the labor market, and organizations.
Her dissertation examines how U.S. immigration policy and employers interact to shape the experiences of high-skilled immigrants. She shows how temporary visa programs, such as the H-1B, operate as both the main pathway to skill-based immigration and a mechanism of stratification—binding migrants to employer control, restricting access to permanent residency, and reinforcing racial inequality. Drawing on large-scale administrative records from government agencies, nationally representative survey data, and a longitudinal study of 70 elite immigrant youth, she develops the concept of the paradox of deservingness to capture the disjuncture between immigrants’ presumed merit and their exclusion from stable employment and legal membership, revealing how the system undermines the promise of meritocracy.
Her broader research examines family inequalities and social stratification in global contexts. She has studied fertility and childcare disruptions during the COVID-19 pandemic, union formation in China, and the influence of family background on educational outcomes in both the U.S. and China. Her articles are published in journals such as Sociology, Demographic Research, Population Research and Policy Review, Journal of Family Issues, and Chinese Journal of Sociology.
Publications
- Yang, Yining Milly & Grace Kao. 2024. “Do Resources Blunt the Impact of COVID-19 on Fertility Desires in the United States?” Population Research and Policy Review, 43, 2: 1-20. DOI: 10.1007/s11113-023-09847-2.
- Yang, Yining Milly. 2024. “Premarital Cohabitation and the Gendered Division of Housework in China.” Chinese Journal of Sociology (Special Issue on Inequality in China, Edited by Yu Xie and James Raymo). DOI: 10.1177/2057150X241241490.
- Yang, Yining Milly, Emma Zang & Jessica Calarco. 2024 “Patterns in Receiving Informal Help with Childcare Among US Parents During the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Journal of Family Issues. DOI: 10.1177/0192513X241257242.
- Zang, Emma, Yining Milly Yang, James Z. Lee. 2024. “Parents’ Industrial Sectors and Fields of Study: Five Decades of Evidence from an Elite Regional University in China.” Sociology. DOI: 10.1177/00380385241242044.