#
My research broadly focuses on the social and structural processes and consequences that immigrants experience in host societies, including residential mobility and segregation, socioeconomic integration, selectivity and health outcomes, and family dynamics. #
Recent Articles
This study investigates the dynamics and factors affecting immigrant residential segregation in Japan between 2000 and 2020, a period marked by Japan's emergence as a global immigrant destination. Using restricted-access census microdata, I examined the segregation of the 12 largest immigrant groups to the Japanese majority and among each other. I then assessed the relationship between dissimilarity and factors affecting integration using pooled linear regressions and individual location attainment models. My findings reveal that all immigrant groups exhibit high residential segregation from the Japanese majority and notable pairwise segregation. There is a general trend of spatial assimilation that higher levels of socioeconomic factors predict less segregation, while Brazilians and Peruvians, the earliest contemporary immigrant group who arrived in Japan as ethnic descendants, demonstrate a pronounced tendency towards place stratification. These observations provide support for both spatial assimilation and place stratification theory in the Japanese context. Moreover, there is a strong trend of self-segregation among highly skilled elite, particularly Western immigrants from the Japanese majority and peer immigrants. The results provide support for this dichotomy in segregation trends, underlining the integration challenges for minority groups in global new destinations and the pronounced self-segregation among elite skilled minorities.
This article examines immigrant residential mobility patterns in and out of ethnic neighborhoods, focusing on the effects of both socioeconomic attainment and coethnic preferences. Using a recently conducted survey sample of Chinese immigrants in Japan, the study reveals four distinct mobility patterns that lead to residence in and out of ethnic neighborhoods. The four types are a combination of mobility between ethnic and majority neighborhoods, including remaining in ethnic neighborhoods, moving from ethnic neighborhoods to majority neighborhoods, remaining in majority neighborhoods, and moving from majority neighborhoods to ethnic neighborhoods. Varying levels of socioeconomic resources and coethnic residential preferences influence these patterns. They show that ethnic neighborhoods, while serving as essential gateways that offer an initial foothold for newcomers, also act as hubs for cultural affiliation for those with high coethnic preferences, leading some immigrants to move from majority to ethnic neighborhoods. The results also highlight the role of ethnic housing agents in securing housing for socioeconomically disadvantaged immigrants and underscore the importance of language proficiency in achieving spatial assimilation. These results emphasize the significance of mobility pathways in residential integration and suggest potential differences in the integration processes between traditional and global new destinations.
Scholars contend that Japanese firms hold white-collar foreign workers to a high bar for assimilation. This model of the ethnocentric firm suggests that Japan’s growing number of foreign-educated white-collar migrants should face steep labor market penalties compared to migrants educated in Japan, because they have had fewer opportunities to familiarize themselves with Japanese working styles and norms. We test this hypothesis using a sample of 546 Asian white-collar foreign workers. However, we find that, robust to controls for compositional differences in the foreign- and Japan-educated migrant populations, foreign-educated migrants earn more. Since wage penalties for foreign degrees are ubiquitous in other national contexts, this finding counterintuitively implies that, at least in evaluation and rewards, Japanese firms may be less ethnocentric than the global norm.