@article{ebert_liao_estrada_2020, title={Apathy and Color-Blindness in Privatized Immigration Control}, volume={6}, ISSN={["2332-6505"]}, url={http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2332649219846140}, DOI={10.1177/2332649219846140}, abstractNote={Despite several widely covered scandals involving the role of for-profit corporations in administering immigration policy, the privatization of immigration control continues apace with the criminalization of immigration. How does this practice sustain its legitimacy among the public amid so much controversy? Recent studies on the criminalization of immigration suggest that supporters would explicitly vilify immigrants to defend the privatization of immigration control. Research on racialized social control, on the other hand, implies that proponents would avoid explicit racism and vilification and instead rely on subtler narratives to validate the practice. Drawing on a qualitative analysis of over 600 frames derived from nearly 200 news media articles spanning over 20 years, we find that journalists and their sources rarely vilify immigrants to justify the privatization of immigration control. Instead, they frame the privatization of immigration detention as a normal component of population management and an integral part of the U.S. economy through what we call the apathy strategy—a pattern of void in which not only the systematic oppression of immigrants is underplayed, immigrant themselves also become invisible.}, number={4}, journal={SOCIOLOGY OF RACE AND ETHNICITY}, publisher={SAGE Publications}, author={Ebert, Kim and Liao, Wenjie and Estrada, Emily P.}, year={2020}, month={Oct}, pages={533–547} }
 @article{estrada_ebert_liao_2020, title={Polarized Toward Apathy: An Analysis of the Privatized Immigration-Control Debate in the Trump Era}, volume={53}, ISSN={["1537-5935"]}, url={https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096520000785}, DOI={10.1017/S1049096520000785}, abstractNote={Interlocking corporations, individuals, and institutions have benefited from a strong and growing prison– industrial complex that targets poor communities of color.More recently, immigrants have become another “supply” group of this growing business—a business that has been particularly profitable for private prison corporations, including CoreCivic (formerly Corrections Corporation of America); The GEO Group, Inc. (GEO); and Management & Training Corporation (MTC) (Doty and Wheatley 2013). Like the incarceration of domestic populations (Alexander 2010), immigration detention represents a gendered form of institutional racism that disproportionately targets impoverished men of African and Latin American descent (Golash-Boza 2016). Moreover, like mass incarceration, for-profit detention has been the subject of considerable public debate. Numerous reports criticize aspects of corporate detention, including its influence and embeddedness in government institutions, exploitation and mismanagement within its facilities, and the infusion of a profit motive into population management (American Civil Liberties Union 2014; Elk and Sloan 2011; Horowitz 2016; Sullivan 2010). These critiques reached a critical point when, in August 2016, President Obama’s Department of Justice announced plans to phase out the use of for-profit prisons that primarily house “criminal aliens.” However, months later, the Trump administration reversed this decision, thereby strengthening its commitment to incarcerating immigrants, most of whom are imprisoned in for-profit facilities (Cullen 2018). Despite support from the Trump administration, the controversy surrounding for-profit (and public) immigration control continues, most notably amid scandals involving detained children and family separation. Faced with new economic opportunities, and new criticisms, proponents are pressured to defend and elicit support for privatized immigration control. Before Trump’s election, advocates for the industry employed an apathy strategy by actively avoiding discussions of immigrants and inequality, as though the oppressed or oppressive practices do not matter or exist (Ebert, Liao, and Estrada 2019). This strategy is akin to existing analytic frameworks including racial apathy and color-blind racism (Bonilla-Silva 2017; Forman and Lewis 2006; Mueller 2017) in that rather than explicitly vilifying immigrants, journalists and their sources framed privatized immigration control as a normal component of population management and the economy as well as a solution to manufactured social problems. In contrast, throughout his campaign and presidency, Trump has aimed overtly racist statements at immigrants and other communities of color (Crabtree et al. 2018; Medina Vidal 2018). Recent studies argue that blatant expressions of racism within the Trump administration may have facilitated major immigration-policy changes (Pierce and Steele 2017) and normalized white supremacist and nativist narratives (Shafer 2017). That is, Trump’s embrace of “politically incorrect” rhetoric may have altered aspects of the discursive opportunity structure (DOS), thereby validating certain narratives and enabling their diffusion and increased visibility in the public sphere (see McCammon et al. 2007 and references therein). It remains to be seen, however, whether the transformation of the DOS has influenced narratives in other arenas (e.g., immigration control). Have supporters embraced virulent racism and nativism to justify the industry? What about opponents? Has the transformation of the DOS inspired counter-narratives that publicize the institutional racism underlying the industry?}, number={4}, journal={PS-POLITICAL SCIENCE & POLITICS}, publisher={Cambridge University Press (CUP)}, author={Estrada, Emily P. and Ebert, Kim and Liao, Wenjie}, year={2020}, month={Oct}, pages={679–684} }
 @article{liao_2019, title={Legitimacy of authoritarian law: Legal compliance in China}, volume={34}, ISSN={["1461-7242"]}, DOI={10.1177/0268580919865096}, abstractNote={Very few studies of legal compliance have been conducted outside the context of liberal democracies. This study tests and expands theoretical expectations regarding legitimacy and its effect on legal compliance in the context of China, a society under authoritarian rule where clashing cultural discourses coexist. In addition, it examines different types of laws, highlighting the importance of social relations regulated by and cultural elements supporting various laws. Using linear regressions with data from an original representative social survey of 556 individuals in Chengdu, China, the author finds that (1) the perceived legitimacy of law, (2) expectations concerning compliance with law, and, most importantly, (3) the association between law’s legitimacy and expected compliance all vary according to the type of social relationship targeted by the legal regulation (familial, state-oriented, or economic). The article shows how China’s cultural, political, and historical environments contribute to the patterns identified in this analysis.}, number={6}, journal={INTERNATIONAL SOCIOLOGY}, author={Liao, Wenjie}, year={2019}, month={Nov}, pages={675–695} }
 @article{boyle_golden_liao_2017, title={The Catholic Church and international law}, volume={13}, DOI={10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-110615-084534}, abstractNote={Since the 1960s, the Catholic Church has been immensely influential in shaping international law. It provides a compelling example of how nonstate actors, relying on principled positions rather than resources, can alter the course of global policy making. The Church's authority rests on three distinct features: (a) independence from the nation-state system; (b) a centralized transnational bureaucracy; and (c) its enduring ideology. In this review, we elaborate on the Church's role in promoting peace, serving the poor, and blocking the institutionalization of access to contraception and abortion. Church ideology finds strong secular counterparts in the cases of promoting peace and support for the poor. It is on shakier ground when it ventures into gender issues, which it has done with zeal in recent years. Its primary allies on gender issues have been other religious organizations and Islamic states, reinforcing the religious rather than human rights basis for Church positions. The Church's role as the moral authority in the secular United Nations system is therefore less clear when it speaks about gender and sexuality.}, journal={Annual review of law and social science, vol 13}, author={Boyle, E. H. and Golden, S. and Liao, W. J.}, year={2017}, pages={395–411} }
 @article{liao_luo_le_chu_epstein_yu_ahluwalia_thomas_2013, title={Analysis of cigarette purchase task instrument data with a left-censored mixed effects model.}, volume={21}, ISSN={1936-2293 1064-1297}, url={http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0031610}, DOI={10.1037/a0031610}, abstractNote={The drug purchase task is a frequently used instrument for measuring the relative reinforcing efficacy (RRE) of a substance, a central concept in psychopharmacological research. Although a purchase task instrument, such as the cigarette purchase task (CPT), provides a comprehensive and inexpensive way to assess various aspects of a drug's RRE, the application of conventional statistical methods to data generated from such an instrument may not be adequate by simply ignoring or replacing the extra zeros or missing values in the data with arbitrary small consumption values, for example, 0.001. We applied the left-censored mixed effects model to CPT data from a smoking cessation study of college students and demonstrated its superiority over the existing methods with simulation studies. Theoretical implications of the findings, limitations of the proposed method, and future directions of research are also discussed.}, number={2}, journal={Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology}, publisher={American Psychological Association (APA)}, author={Liao, Wenjie and Luo, Xianghua and Le, Chap T. and Chu, Haitao and Epstein, Leonard H. and Yu, Jihnhee and Ahluwalia, Jasjit S. and Thomas, Janet L.}, year={2013}, pages={124–132} }