I am sociologist interested in international migration, refugee studies, childhood, the life-course, and law and policy. I study the legal and political struggles that lie at the heart of classifying migration flows, how immigration laws shape people's lives, the role of volunteers and NGOs in migration management, and how children differ from adults as migratory actors and legal subjects in their own right.

My research has been generously funded by several agencies, including the American Bar Foundation and the National Science Foundation, and has been published in the journals Social Problems, Social Sciences, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Ethnic and Racial Studies, and Journal of Borderlands Studies, as well as in book chapters and policy reports.

My recently published book - Precarious Protections: Unaccompanied Minors Seeking Asylum in the US (University of California Press, 2023)- is an ethnography of the experiences of Central American unaccompanied minors and their immigration attorneys as they pursue applications for refugee status in the US asylum process. The book is based on research that I conducted over the course of six years, including extensive ethnographic fieldwork in non-profits in Los Angeles that help children apply for immigration relief and over 120 interviews with unaccompanied children, their attorneys, and other key actors.

My current research includes two major studies. First, with the support of the ABF and in collaboration with Tatiana Padilla (Cornell), we are studying access to legal representation and determinants of case outcomes for unaccompanied minors in the U.S. immigration court using a large administrative dataset. Second, with a team of research assistants, I am conducting an ethnographic study on the reception of asylum-seekers in Chicago. 

I received my Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2020, and I was a postdoctoral fellow at Cornell from 2020 to 2022. Before pursuing an academic career, I worked for non-profits and was a policy analyst for the Italian National Contact Point of the European Migration Network.

For up-to-date information about my research, collaborations, and publications, please visit: https://www.gallichiara.com/

Recent publications

Galli, Chiara. 2023. Precarious Protections: Unaccompanied Minors Seeking Asylum in the US. Oakland: University of California Press.

Galli, Chiara. 2023. "The Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic 'Crisis' on Unaccompanied Minors Navigating Removal Proceedings in the US." Social Sciences 12 (7):  373.

Galli, Chiara. 2023. "Wolves in Sheep's Clothing? What Central American Unaccompanied Minors Know About Crossing the US-Mexico Border." Journal of Borderlands Studies. Online first.