Skip to Main Content
You are now in the main content area

Allison Petrozziello

Assistant Professor
EducationPhD (Global Governance): Laurier
Phone(416) 979-5000 x 556188

Spoken Languages

English, Spanish

Biography

Allison Petrozziello is Assistant Professor of Global Migration & Inequality at Toronto Metropolitan University. Dr. Petrozziello is a global governance scholar specialized in gender and human-rights based approaches to the governance of migration and citizenship. Her academic work builds on over 15 years of experience in international research, teaching, and policy advocacy work, mostly in Latin America and the Caribbean, with stakeholders ranging from grassroots organizations to policymakers to the United Nations. She has consulted for UN Women, the International Labour Organization (ILO), Inter-American Development Bank, and the Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID), among others. At TMU, she teaches courses in comparative and global politics for undergraduate programs in the Department of Politics and Public Administration as well as the PhD program in Policy Studies.

An interdisciplinary scholar, Dr. Petrozziello’s research interests revolve around gender, migration, international development, human rights, and statelessness. She is committed to connecting research with policy practice to advance human and labour rights of the world’s most marginalized and to address governance concerns around identity documentation, irregular migration, (non)citizenship, and statelessness. Her work has informed United Nations policy recommendations by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights; Special Rapporteur on violence against women; UNICEF; UN Committees on the Rights of the Child, Migrant Workers, Racial Discrimination; and CEDAW; and the ILO. She is currently working on a book manuscript based on her award-winning dissertation Birth Registration as Bordering Practice: A Feminist Analysis of Migration Governance and the Production of Statelessness (external link) . Dr. Petrozziello’s research, as featured on TMU’s Borders & Belonging podcast, examines global patterns of intersecting forms of social inequality which can make children of migrants and refugees stateless. Her academic work has been published in English and Spanish in journals, such as International Migration, Gender & Development, The Statelessness and Citizenship Review, Migración y Desarrollo, Cultural Dynamics, and the Bulletin of Latin American Research.

Dr. Petrozziello is affiliated with the Bridging Divides research program on Migrant Integration in the Mid-21st Century (Citizenship and Participation theme); the Gender+Migration Hub (external link)  at Laurier’s International Migration Research Centre; and the Caribbean Migrants Observatory (OBMICA (external link) , Dominican Republic). She holds a PhD in Global Governance from Wilfrid Laurier University/Balsillie School of International Affairs, an MA in International Development & Social Change from Clark University, and a BA in Women’s Studies from Smith College.

Articles

Chapters

  • Petrozziello, A.J. 2024. “Identity documentation as development: How do migrants and their children figure?” in Piper, N. and K. Datta, eds. The Elgar Companion to Migration and the Sustainable Development Goals. Edward Elgar Publishing. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781802204513.00018 (external link) 
  • Petrozziello, A.J. and J. Hennebry. (Forthcoming) “Building resilience through policy: The example of gender-responsive ‘inclusive’ integration.” Chap. 13 in Preston, V., J. Shields, and T. Bedard, eds. International Migration and Social Resilience: Individual and Collective Resistance. McGill-Queens University Press.
  • Hennebry, J., A.J. Petrozziello, and M. Walton-Roberts. (Forthcoming) “Learning to cope or coping to learn? A gender-responsive reading of international student resilience” chap 7 in Ghosh, S., L. Veronis and M. Walton-Roberts, eds. Leaving to Learn: Mapping the place of resilience in the journeys of international students to Canada. University of British Columbia Press.
  • Petrozziello, A.J. 2023. “La problematización de las ‘parturientas haitianas’ y otras estrategias de control fronterizo” (Problematizing Haitian Women as ‘Birthers’ and Other Border Control Strategies). Chap 1 in Miradas desencadenantes: Voces que desafían, Conferencias Dominicanas de Estudios de Género, Instituto Tecnológico de Santo Domingo (INTEC) and UNHCR: Santo Domingo.
  • Brennan, D., N. Murray, and A.J. Petrozziello. 2021. “Asking the ‘other questions’: Applying intersectionality to understand statelessness in Europe” chap 16 in Bloom, T. and Kingston, L., eds. Statelessness, Governance, and the Problem of Citizenship (external link) . Manchester Univ. Press.
  • Fine, J. and A. Petrozziello. 2017. “Haitian Migrant Workers in the Dominican Republic” in Informal Workers and Collective Action: A Global Perspective (external link) , edited by A.E. Eaton, S.J. Schurman and M. Chen. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press/ILR Press.

Technical Reports

Dr. Allison Petrozziello’s research interests centre on gender, migration, international development, human rights, and statelessness. She is currently completing a project using intersectional feminist analysis to determine the global patterns of exclusion from birth registration which generate a risk of statelessness for children of migrants and refugees. A second line of inquiry focuses on gender and human rights-based approaches to migration governance. 

Dr. Petrozziello teaches courses on women and politics, comparative and global politics.