Miu Chung Yan joined the School in 2004. Prior to joining UBC, he studied, practiced and taught social work in Hong Kong, London, England, Toronto and San Francisco. His sojourner’s experience has influenced his major research interests covering settlement and integration of immigrants and refugees, critical cross-cultural and antiracist practice, internal dynamics in Chinese community, place-based community development and policy, globalization and social development, and North-South social work knowledge transfer.

As an applied qualitative researcher, he adopts a collaborative community-based approach in his research works. He works closely with local immigrant and refugee serving agencies and neighbourhood houses to generate new knowledge to improve policies, services and practice in serving newcomers to Canada. Working collaboratively with colleagues in China and Hong Kong SAR, he has been investigating and writing extensively on social work and social work education development in China. He is also interested to explore how to apply social theories in social work practice and how social work practice can inform social theories. In terms of teaching, his pedagogy is informed by the ideas of critical inter-subjectivity, reciprocal engagement, reflexive reflectivity and critical pragmatism.

On-going Projects

1. Global Portal of Social Work Organization Mechanism

This project is a collaborative project sponsored by International Association of Schools of Social Work. It aims at developing online portal to document and share how different social work organizing regime works across the world. The portal can be useful for research and teaching international social work and, as a reference, for assessment of foreign social work qualification.

2. A Critical Review of Textual Roots of North American Social Work

The project is to chronologically review classic social work literature to re-configure the historical trajectory of the evolution of social work practice theories in US and Canada.

Recently Completed Projects (Last five years)

1. Supporting Informal Caregivers among Immigrants from Hong Kong

This project is to examine the experience and practice of caregiving, particularly for people with dementia, among immigrants from Hong Kong. The project is funded Hong Kong Caritas Higher Education Institute as part of a larger project that aims at developing and evaluating a Chinese caregiving planning model in Hong Kong.

1. The Innovative BC Settlement Case Management Service Model

This evaluative project adopts a quasi-experimental approach to develop and test an enhanced model of case management practice for the settlement service field in BC.

Reports:

The BC Settlement Collaborative Case Management Service Model : Baseline Report

The BC Settlement Collaborative Case Management Service Model : Final Report

1. Survey Study on Hong Kong Residents Recently Arrived Canada

This online survey is to examine the settlement and integration experience of Hong Kong residents who returned to or arrived in Canada after 2015. The first report of the survey result has been published

Reports of the First Wave Survey

HKr Survey First Report (June 12 2023)

Second Report of HKer Survey (August 10 2023)

Report of the Second Wave Survey

Survey study on Hong Kong residents recently arrived in Canada (second wave): Preliminary report (January 31, 2025)

1. Settling the Unsettled: A Qualitative Study of Hong Kong Diaspora in Canada, UK and Taiwan

In this study, I will examine how the policies of host country, local contexts of community where they settled, and their connection with Hong Kong may have shaped the settlement and integration experience of Hong Kong immigrants in these three countries.

Research report (in Chinese)

Settling the Unsettled: A Qualitative Study of Hong Kong Immigrants in the United Kingdom, Taiwan and Canada : Narrative Accounts Report (March 24, 2025)

Selected Publications (Last five years)

2025       Lauer, Sean, Karen Wong and Miu Chung Yan. Social infrastructure, community organizations, and friendship formation: a scoping review. Community Development Journal. 60(2): 267–285. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/cdj/bsae023.

2024       Lee, Jinah, Miu Chung Yan. The development of social work education in Korea: A historical review. Social Work Education. 43(1): 186-202. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/02615479.2022.2107196.

2023       Capri, Kwong, Miu Chung Yan, Sean Lauer and Shaohua Zhan. Immigrant Identifications and ICT Use: A Survey Study of Chinese and South Asian Immigrants in Canada. Journal of International Migration and Integration. 24: 885-910. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12134-022-00983-w.

2023       Wong, Chi Ben, Miu Chung Yan. Leaving the homeland again for my family’s future: Post-return migration among Hong Kong Canadians. Journal of International Migration and Integration. 24:467-486. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12134-022-00955-0

2022       Lee, Jinah, Miu Chung Yan. The development of social work education in Korea: A historical review. Social Work Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/02615479.2022.2107196.

2022      Watermeyer, Tsering, Miu Chung Yan, Indigenization without ‘indigeneity’: Problematizing the discourse of indigenization of social work in China, British Journal of Social Work. 52(3):1511–1528. DOI: 10.1093/bjsw/bcab064. (Editors’ Choice)

2022      Lauer, Sean, Miu Chung Yan, Social infrastructure and social capacity development among newcomers to Canada: The role of neighbourhood houses in Vancouver”, Journal of International Migration and Integration. 23, 911–929. DOI: 10.1007/s12134-021-00842-0.

2021     Yan, Miu Chung, Jinah Lee and Edward K.L. Chan. Mechanisms of gatekeeping in the social work profession: Lessons learned from Canada, Hong Kong and South Korea. British Journal of Social Work, 51(8):3283-3300. doi: 10.1093/bjsw/bcaa146.

2021      Yan, Miu Chung, Sean Lauer, Connecting the dots: Neighbourhoods house and institutional accessibility. International Social Work. DOI: 10.1177/0020872820972469.

Areas of Scholarship: Immigration and settlement; youth from immigrant families; place-based community development; social work internationalization and indigenization; social policy and process

Areas of Practice: Working with immigrants and refugees; critical cross-cultural social work practice; group work in community setting; community development and organization; case management