She received her PhD in sociology from University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research focuses on informal labor, labor organizing, global inequality and migration. She has researched and published articles on informal workers, including domestic workers in Hong Kong and street vendors and construction workers in China. Her current research focuses on informal workers in Asia, and more recently informal workers in Detroit, MI. Recent research has appeared in Global Feminism: Women’s Transnational Activism, Organizing, and Human Rights, 2006, (NYU Press); From Iron Rice Bowl to Informalization, 2011 (Cornell University Press), Critical Sociology. Her book, Building China: The Rise of Informal Work and Spatial Politics, is forthcoming from Cornell University Press.