My early theoretical work engaged primarily with three areas of scholarship relating to the socio-cultural effects of large-scale migration and capital flows on urban areas: first, the literature on transnational movements of people and capital in the context of contemporary global economic restructuring; second, the literature on the Hong Kong Chinese diaspora; third, scholarship pertaining to urban development and gentrification. Please see Crossing the Neoliberal Line: Pacific Rim Migration and the Metropolis for a good overview of this body of work.

In more recent research I have examined the impact of transnational migration on the philosophies and practices of education, with a special focus on how children are educated to become citizens of a particular nation-state. From 2004-2007 I was the Simpson Professor in the Public Humanities at the University of Washington. During that time I established and directed Reclaiming Childhood, a project on the changing nature of American childhood in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. As the Simpson Professor I also became interested in more general questions related to public scholarship, and in the past few years I have sought to make my work more accessible through writing and speaking in public forums. I am currently writing a trade book called Stealing Childhood with the poet Frances McCue and the child psychologist Laura Kastner. I am also editing a volume of essays entitled Being and Becoming a Public Scholar that will appear as a special issue of Antipode in June, 2008, followed by a Blackwell book of the same title. My research interests in migration and urban struggle continue, but my empirical work is now centered in Europe.

For more information on articles and books that pertain to these research interests, please see my curriculum vitae and publications.

The data and ideas associated with my research figure prominently in my teaching at both the graduate and undergraduate levels, as does a commitment to active learning. My pedagogic philosophy is to engage students as much as possible with contemporary issues—both intellectually and in terms of community understanding and praxis.

In recent years I have joined several of my colleagues in offering a service learning option to my classes in migration and urban geography. In addition to service learning, the focus of student research papers help to bring to the foreground contemporary issues affecting society. The connections students make between abstract concepts and grounded empirical research and service can lead to the types of nuanced intellectual understandings and political awareness that are of greatest importance to me as a teacher. In all of my courses I emphasize active learning and encourage students to become involved with the world around them—both the world of ideas and of contemporary events.