Siqi Tu is a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. She earned a B.A. degree in Sociology from Fudan University (China) and a M.A. degree in Sociology from Columbia University. Her work focuses on the areas of urban sociology, immigration, education, elites, and contemporary Chinese societies.
Tu was born and raised in Shanghai, China and moved to New York City in 2012. She developed her interest in immigration and urban neighborhoods as a keen observer of diverse communities in different metropolitan areas. Her dissertation, “Destination Diploma: How Chinese Upper-Middle Class Families ‘Outsource’ Secondary Education to the United States,” investigates why and how Chinese upper-middle-class families make decisions to send their children to the Unites States to attend private high schools, some as young as 14 years of age, and it analyzes the actual lived experiences of the students of this “parachute generation.” She has taught Sociology at Brooklyn College since 2014 and is currently a Graduate Fellow at Futures Initiative, which advocates greater equity and innovation in higher education at every level of the university.
