After receiving his Ph.D. in anthropology in 1997 from the University of California at Berkeley, he was a collegiate assistant professor at the University of Chicago. He then served as associate director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California at San Diego. His primary academic interests include international migration, diasporas, ethnic minorities, ethnic and national identity, transnationalism and globalization, ethnic return migrants, and the Japanese diaspora in the Americas.