Chiara Galli , Access to Justice Scholar

Chiara Galli

Access to Justice Scholar

ABF Researcher

Chiara Galli (she/her) is a sociologist and Assistant Professor of Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago. She studies the profession of public interest immigration lawyering and the effects of the law on the lives of vulnerable groups of undocumented immigrants, including children and asylum-seekers. Her book Precarious Protections: Unaccompanied Minors Seeking Asylum in the US (University of California Press, 2023) is based on ethnographic research that she conducted in legal clinics in Los Angeles during the Obama and Trump administrations and 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 Focus

Galli will examine access to legal representation and case outcomes for unaccompanied immigrant children facing deportation proceedings in US immigration court. By examining these outcomes using a large-scale national administrative dataset, this project will enhance our understanding of children’s experiences in the US immigration system, which, to date, has been based on ethnographic and qualitative studies that lack generalizability.