Professor Chiara Galli

Profile

I am sociologist who studies international migration. My research examines how children differ from adults as migratory actors and legal subjects in their own right, as well as the effects of the law on immigrants’ lives, with a particular interest in those “humanitarian” categories of immigrants considered vulnerable and deserving of exception from punitive immigration enforcement – mainly,  asylum-seekers and unaccompanied minors.

I am the author of the award winning book, Precarious Protections: Unaccompanied Minors Seeking Asylum in the United States (University of California Press. 2023), an ethnographic study that chronicles the experiences and perspectives of Central American unaccompanied minors and their immigration attorneys as they pursue applications for refugee status in the US asylum process. 

Research

Publications

• Galli, Chiara. 2023. Precarious Protections: Unaccompanied Minors Seeking Asylum in the US. Oakland: University of California Press.
• Galli, Chiara & Tatiana Padilla. 2025. “New Statistics on the Unaccompanied Minors in US Immigration Court.” International Migration Review. Online first https://doi.org/10.1177/01979183251316528
• Galli, Chiara and Filiz Garip. 2024. “Bringing children to the center of migration theory.” International Migration Review 58 (4): 1876-1912.
• Galli, Chiara. 2023. “Wolves in sheep’s clothing? What unaccompanied minors know about crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.” Journal of Borderlands Studies 38 (6): 975-993 
• Galli, Chiara. 2023. “The Effects of the Covid-19 Pandemic on Immigrant Youth Navigating Removal Proceedings in the U.S.” Social Sciences 12 (7): 373.
• Galli, Chiara. 2020. “The Ambivalent Context of Reception and the Dichotomous Legal Consciousness of Unaccompanied Minors.” Social Problems 67 (4): 763-781. 
• Galli, Chiara. 2018. “A Rite of Reverse Passage: The Construction of Youth Migration in the US Asylum Process.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 41(9):1651-1671.  

Expertise