Published papers

The impact of immigrant parents' premigration family background on their second-generation children residing in destination countries remains underexplored in the literature on historical social mobility. Using multigenerational historical survey records from the Japanese American Research Project, this study investigates the influence of premigration socioeconomic and cultural background of Japan-born grandparents and parents on the social mobility of second-generation Japanese Americans born in the continental United States in the early twentieth century. The analysis reveals the enduring effects of family premigration socioeconomic status, as indicated by occupation and education, and culture conducive to upward mobility, proxied by samurai ancestry, on second-generation Japanese Americans' educational and income levels. These effects may extend back to their nonmigrant grandparents and possibly contrast with their European second-generation immigrant counterparts, who typically experienced upward mobility regardless of their family background. The results point to the critical role of origin-country socioeconomic status and culture in immigrant social mobility research, particularly for populations whose negative reception has hindered their resource access in their new countries. Awards and External Recognition: This article received an Honorable Mention for the ASA Asia and Asian America Best Research Paper Award, the 20th Population Association of Japan Best Paper Award, and the 24th Japanese Sociological Society Shorei-Sho (Encouragement Award, Article Division). An official review of the article was published in Japanese Sociological Society News, No. 246, p. 22 (https://jss-sociology.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/jss_news246.pdf#page=22)

This study explores the socioeconomic selectivity of Japanese male immigrants who migrated to the continental United States (US) during the Age of Mass Migration (mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth century) by comparing the US administrative records of Japanese long-term immigrants interned during World War 2 (WRA records) with a Japanese social survey of non-migrants (SSM survey). Both data contained information on educational attainment in Japan, the father's occupation in Japan, birth cohort, and birth prefecture. The analysis revealed positive educational selectivity of the long-term migration of both secondary- and tertiary school-educated Japanese males in all the migratory time periods. The selectivity of secondary school-educated Japanese males was especially strong and extended to males from all family backgrounds and all Japanese prefectures. Given the strong middle-class nature of secondary and tertiary education in the late nineteenth to early twentieth century in Japan, the results showed that first-generation Japanese immigrants were positively selected in terms of their socioeconomic status. These findings are important because the growing literature on socioeconomic selection in migration during the Age of Mass Migration has predominantly focused on transatlantic (Europe–US) migration and has largely neglected transpacific migration from Asia. Awards and External Recognition: This article received Social Science Japan Data Archive Excellent Paper Award, Institute of Social Science, The University of Tokyo in 2022,

The economic integration of immigrants is a salient social issue in Japan. Although the US immigration literature has stressed the importance of host-country-specific human capital over country-of-origin human capital for immigrants, previous studies in Japan have shown mixed results about the effects of these two types of human capital on the economic integration of immigrants. The mixed results might be because previous studies focused on only specific immigrant groups (with regard to nationalities, cities, and visa status), human capital variables, and dimensions of economic achievements in the Japanese labor market. The segmented nature of the Japanese labor market structure and immigration policies create different pathways to “economic achievements” of immigrants depending on the dimension of “economic achievements” studied. By conducting a nationally representative social survey of Japanese immigrants, we examined the association between the two types of human capital (i.e., country-of-origin and host-country-specific) and the three indicators of labor market success: employment status and firm size, occupational status, and income. Our results indicate that host-country-specific human capital in the form of higher education and language proficiency is important for all three indicators of economic achievement in Japan, while country-of-origin human capital in the form of higher education and vocational skills is transferable to some extent. Our results suggest that the significance of human capital in immigrants' economic success is determined not only by the structure of the labor market but also by immigration policies.

In the United States, there is a wide academic achievement gap, beginning in early childhood, between children with more and less educated parents. However, we know little about the differences in size and trajectories of achievement gaps associated with parental education and nativity. Drawing on two US education datasets that enable me to follow a cohort of children from kindergarten to high school, I estimate the size and trajectories of standardized test-score gaps associated with parental education, separately for children of native-born and immigrant parents. I find that the test-score gap between children with more and less educated native-born parents stays wide and stable from kindergarten entry to high school. In contrast, the test-score gap between children with more and less educated immigrant parents is narrower in kindergarten because of higher achievement of children with less educated immigrant parents, compared to their counterparts with less educated native-born parents. Moreover, the gap between more and less educated immigrant parents further narrows in their early life course because the achievement of children with less educated immigrant parents improves relative to children with more educated immigrant parents. Differences by parental nativity in the size and trajectories of achievement gaps associated with parental education can be partially explained by the fact that children with less educated immigrant parents have relatively greater resources than their peers with less educated native-born parents from early in life. My findings provide evidence that the “immigrant advantage” in academic achievement, a common finding in the literature on immigrant education in the United States, originates early in the life course.