Laura Garavini was born in 1966 in Vignola / Emilia, in a farmer's family.

She graduated in Political Science with a summa cum laude distinction from Bologna University and earned her master's degree in management of European Community projects from Luiss University Rome.

In November 1989, only a few days after the fall of the Berlin wall, she arrived in Germany. Initially, she worked as a lecturer at the Christian-Albrechts-University, Kiel, and taught Italian to emigrants' children.

Committed to several initiatives for immigrant integration, Laura Garavini was the Italian coordinator of a government-financed project in Cologne, aimed at improving migrant's professional qualifications.

Since 1999 she was the representative of the patronato Ital in Berlin where she was in close contact with the problems of the Italian community.

After the Duisburg mafia killing in August 2007, she founded the movement “Mafia? Nein danke!”, together with Italian restaurant-owners in Germany. Thanks to “Mafia? Nein danke!” in December 2007, 44 Italian restaurant-owners reported a demand of protection money, thereby helping German police arrest the blackmailers. This has been the greatest rebellion against the pizzo outside Italy. German police have recently praised the commitment of the initiative „Mafia? Nein danke!“ as a “model for the fight against the mafia”.

Laura Garavini is a founding member of the Democratic Party and was part of the commission for the “manifesto of general values”. She is a member of the National Coordination Board of the Democratic Party as the only representative of the Italians living abroad.

In April 2008, Laura Garavini has been elected member of the Italian parliament with the highest number of preference votes in the constituency Europe. She is part of the commission for European affairs and, since November 2008, chairman of the Democratic Party in the Antimafia commission.