In Precarious Protections, Chiara Galli presents a compelling and comprehensive account of the challenges unaccompanied minors from Central America encounter as they seek asylum in the United States. Over 6 years of ethnographic research in Los Angeles, California, serves as the foundation for Galli's exploration of the legal and sociological labyrinth these youth navigate, from the dangers of their homelands to their adaptation and coming of age in a foreign land.
Galli gains access as a volunteer within an immigration legal service organization giving her firsthand insight into the complex maze of legal challenges that these young migrants face. Her narrative revolves around two primary groups or “informants”: the unaccompanied minors and the immigration attorneys representing them. Unaccompanied minors ranged from approximately 12 to over 18 years old at the time of her interview and were all under the age of 18 at the time of their entry into the United States. The majority of the youth interviewed were about 15 or 16 at the time of arrival, while the majority interviewed were over the age of 18 at the point of being interviewed. Galli's sociolegal and ethnographic narrative skillfully interweaves tales of how these youths quickly adapt to their status as unaccompanied minors, with the aid of “legal brokers” guiding them through the intricate U.S. asylum legal process. Through her narrative, she weaves the stories and backgrounds of how youth are quickly socialized to adapt to the category of unaccompanied minors through their own legal socialization and by the legal brokers who assist them with case processing to the eventual conclusion of their asylum cases.
Galli disrupts the conventional dichotomy of these minors as either innocent children or menacing quasi-adults. She contextualizes how unaccompanied youth must demonstrate the right amount of suffering during the legal process to obtain asylum. By doing so youth position themselves appropriately to enhance their chances of securing legal status in the United States. Galli accomplishes this by illustrating how asylum law shape the experiences of these minors and the roles of legal experts who assist them. She illustrates that the normative understanding of who counts as a refugee fails to capture the range of precarities faced by Central American youth. Galli elucidates that the youth themselves, and sometimes in counsel with their legal brokers, can reshape how and when these protective laws reach or fall short of their goals.
In the first section of her book, Galli disrupts typical notions of refugee migration (as either economically or politically influenced) by outlining the risks associated with violence in Central America, especially those patterned by gender and age. Through an ethnographic account that includes field immersion and semi-structure interviews, Galli underscores the salience of U.S. immigration laws and policies that actively shape patterns of migration for unaccompanied minors from Central America. She insightfully notes that the term “unaccompanied migrants” overshadows the crucial role family members on either side of the border play in the youths' migration decisions.
Next, Galli examines how youths' legal consciousness shapes their migration as they seek asylum in the United States. For example, her treatment of youth deservedness is useful and assists the reader in understanding how unaccompanied minors navigate a bureaucratic maze to articulate the right type and amount of suffering to successfully translate these experiences into the language of the law. She demonstrates how unaccompanied asylum-seeking minors from Central America live in a liminal state, between the social status of childhood and adulthood. The youths' understanding of these social categories are transformed as they migrate to the United States. Galli highlights that the arduous legal battle to obtain asylum status is also shaped by the youths' understanding and demonstrating the appropriate suffering acceptable under asylum law.
Subsequent sections delve into the importance of legal representation in assisting unaccompanied minors and in shaping their incorporation into the U.S. Here, Galli introduces the concept of “legal brokers” who help in translating eligibility criteria, rights, and obligations for asylum-seeking youths. One response to the lack of publicly available legal representation provided to immigrants navigating immigration court proceedings, is a proliferating nonprofit legal service provider network in Los Angeles, CA. Galli extends prior literature on these providers by considering how their lawyering practices vary depending on resource constraints and organizational practices. These lawyering practices, Galli describes as the “triage model” or the “quasi-universal representation model”, inevitably vary for asylum-seeking youth. She paints a vivid picture of these diverse lawyering practices, elaborating on how these professionals utilize a migrant's “humanitarian capital”—a unique value assigned to their suffering—to aid in the adjudication process. Paradoxes inevitably arise, as Galli demonstrates, in the rational and timing of a youth's context of exit, which can often play out in the subsequent navigation of asylum-seeking legal process. As a result, these experiences, and the youths' legal consciousness of U.S. immigration and asylum law, may help or may detract from their ability to achieve a favorable outcome in their case.
In her exploration of the challenges of coming of age amidst the legal constraints found within each bureaucratic space that unaccompanied minors must navigate, Galli evokes empathy. She captures the dual liminality unaccompanied minors experience—both legally (often experienced in limbo) and developmentally (between childhood and adulthood). The varying types of support, be it from family, legal representation, or case management, become crucial lifelines for these minors, helping them carve out a sense of belonging in their new home.
“Precarious Protections” expands our understanding of unaccompanied minors' migratory experiences, emphasizing the critical role of legal brokers in shaping these journeys. Galli centers analysis on contextualizing how immigration law shapes these migratory processes for youth as they seek legal protections. Legal brokers undoubtedly play a prominent role in assisting youth in understanding how to translate their experiences to achieve favorable case outcomes. However, legal actors also play a significant role in shaping unaccompanied minors' presentation of self during their asylum court and legal processes. Galli's emphasis throughout her book is centered on how youth experiencing violence is patterned across dimensions, particularly age and gender. However, scholars may find it frustrating the lack of analytical treatment or acknowledgement of how race and indigeneity intersect among youth navigating these contexts. Issues like immigrant assimilation and incorporation theories could perhaps have been more thoroughly examined. Nonetheless, the book stands as a testament to Galli's profound research and makes an invaluable contribution to the many fields of sociolegal study concerned with issues of asylum and the vulnerabilities of young people.
