Xiaochen Liang is a postdoctoral research associate in Sociology at Washington University in St. Louis. She is currently engaged in projects spanning three related strands of research: (1) legal-status-making as a mechanism of labor market stratification; (2) legal status trajectories and their consequences for immigrant labor market positions and deportation fears; and (3) intra-Asian American heterogeneity in employment. At WashU, she works under Professor Ariela Schachter on the National Survey on Fear of Deportation, a multi-wave study of how immigration enforcement shapes the lives of first and second immigrant communities in the United States.

She completed her PhD in Sociology from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 2026. Her work has been published in journals including the International Migration Review, the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Migration Studies, the Economic and Labour Relations Review, and Violence Against Women.

Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=8QibJt8AAAAJ&hl=en 

ORCID: 0000-0003-0949-6041