Research Bio

Stephanie L. Canizales, PhD, is a researcher, author, and professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, where she is Faculty Director of the Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative. She earned her PhD in Sociology from the University of Southern California (2018).

Stephanie specializes in the study of international migration and immigrant integration, with particular interest in the experiences of Latin American-origin immigrants and their descendants in the United States. Over the last decade, Stephanie has focused her work on the migration and coming-of-age of unaccompanied children from Central America and Mexico in California and Texas. Throughout her research and writing, Stephanie explores the role of immigration policy in shaping the everyday lives of migrant children and their families, how immigrants and the communities they arrive to (re)make one another mutually, and immigrants’ articulations of success and well-being within an increasingly unequal US society. Stephanie’s first book, Sin Padres, Ni Papeles, takes on many of these issues.

Born and raised in Los Angeles, California, Stephanie is the daughter of Salvadoran immigrants whose experiences growing up as unaccompanied youth in Los Angeles motivate her commitment to public scholarship. Stephanie’s research has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times, among other outlets. She also uses her expertise to inform policy through her work as U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Resident Scholar and a UNICEF USA Research Consultant.

Research Expertise and Interest

international migration, immigrant integration, inequality and mobility, qualitative methods, children-youth-and families