By Rosie Bentley, Lily Cakaunitabua, Mair Cave, Zola Mansour, Aura Gleeson, Genevieve Morris

How to play:

• Players: 2-4.
• Objective: Be the first player to reach safety.
• Set up: Place all players’ counters at Start. Shuffle the Good and Bad cards into two separate piles, face down.
• On your turn: Shuffle the die by pressing the popper and move your counter forward the number rolled. If you land on a Good/Bad square, select a corresponding card and follow its instructions. The first player to reach the Safety Zone wins.

We have created a boardgame named ‘The Quest for Asylum’ to demonstrate the seemingly perpetual difficulties in mobility and success people are subjected to as they navigate the “black boxes of bureaucracy” (Thomson, 2012) that make up the legislative process of seeking asylum in the UK. Thomson uses this term to describe administrative systems that are overly complex and largely inaccessible, in which decision-making processes remain hidden, leaving applicants uncertain about how or why outcomes are reached. The game is a remake of the boardgame ‘Pop and Hop’ where each player takes turns to press the popper in the middle which reveals a number on the dice. Individuals keep rolling to eventually get to the home base. We remade the game to make the process of getting to the home base much harder. As individuals make their way across the board, they are faced with legislative obstacles that makes the path to success precarious and long winded. Its aim is to mirror the treacherous labyrinth of legal systems of seeking asylum that are often difficult to navigate; the institutional practices of documentation reflect how state formations have relied on documentation as a technology of power for centuries (ibid: 194).

Refugees and those seeking asylum must be well equipped with knowledge of the bureaucratic system and have all the papers needed to be able to be perceived as truth-telling and worthy of safety. This echoes Agamben’s 1998 theory of bare life, as refugees are stripped of their dignity as political and emotional beings, reduced to their biological state, existing outside the rights afforded to citizens. Asylum seekers are subject to state power but denied the recognition needed to claim those rights, leaving documentation as the only route back into recognised.

In this case, they are reduced to a piece of paper, documentation, or lack thereof. The bureaucratic process begins from the assumption that asylum seekers are untrustworthy; and take advantage of the systems set up to help them. This places the burden of proof (York, 2022) on refugees as they must convince immigration officers to grant them asylum, and officers, as well as asylum seekers, are caught up in a culture of suspicion (Thomas, 2012). Hostility and suspicion towards immigrants and refugees has been proliferated by right-wing media and politicians for years. These have culminated into a proliferation of racist riots, growing ‘reimmigration’ movements and a Labour government making violent changes to immigration policy, such as scrapping Leave to Remain (GMIAU, 2025). This means that refugees now could be ‘playing this game’ for 20 years before they can receive permanent residency (don’t worry the board game only lasts 20 minutes).

The work at the Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit (GMIAU) is based on a culture of empathy rather than suspicion, dedicated to the upmost respect and wellbeing of refugees and asylum seekers. Its staff know the complexities of bureaucracy intimately, helping people navigate it by providing legal advice and long-term support, giving more attention to people at risk of homelessness and destitution, and unaccompanied children and young people. They are part of strong communities and networks that show everyday what solidarity looks like. This mirrors what Rozakou calls ‘socialities of solidarity’ (2016) found within non-governmental humanitarian volunteers in Greece. These volunteers worked within horizontal organising that fostered lateral relations between volunteers and refugees. Anthropological work like Rozakou’s can be used as a way to demonstrate a type of community, solidarity and relations that actively resist the state’s aggression towards asylum system and refugees. This challenges the wider global systems of racial capitalism that place refugees (especially black and Muslim) at the bottom of the hierarchical chain. It is a type of solidarity that resonates with the society they strive to create (ibid), one where no one is illegal; borders do not exist, and all remain strong in their dignity. After all, a political project without revolutionary love is an empty structure (Olufemi, 2023). This allows for agency to be performed by refugees within humanitarian systems, directly combatting the necropolitical stripping of their dignity and political agency (Agamben, 1997). In the game, one gains points and can move forward when one has received affective care, legal advice, and support available through GMIAU.

What the Game Reveals: An Anthropological Reflection

This project shifts focus from describing the asylum system to demonstrating how it is encountered in practice. As a non-textual method, The Quest for Asylum enables a general audience to engage with the system in a more immediate way, moving beyond abstract explanation towards experiential understanding. Rather than just outlining bureaucratic processes, the game shows how outcomes are shaped through navigating conditions that are difficult to interpret or predict.

Through gameplay, participants come to recognise that progression is not consistently determined by knowledge or effort. Instead, it depends on responding to institutional structures that limit control and shape possible outcomes. This reflects anthropological critiques of bureaucracy as something that produces forms of dependence and constrained agency (Hull, 2012).

The game also highlights how individuals are positioned within these systems. Players operate within rules that prioritise procedure over personal context, emphasising how recognition is mediated through institutional frameworks. At the same time, instances of advancement through assistance reflect ‘socialities of solidarity,’ showing how support can enable movement within restrictive conditions Rozakou (2016).

While the game cannot replicate the full consequences of asylum, particularly the risk associated with deportability (De Genova, 2002), it offers a more accessible way of understanding how structural inequalities are produced. In doing so, it provides a new and engaging way to understand a complex social issue.

Bibliography:

York, Sheona. The Impact of UK Immigration Law: Declining Standards of Public Administration, Legal Probity and Democratic Accountability, Springer International Publishing AG, 2022.

Agamben, G. (1998) Homo sacer: sovereign power and bare life. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Olufemi, L. 2023. Experiments in Imagining Otherwise. Hajar Press.

De Genova, N. (2002) ‘Migrant “Illegality” and Deportability in Everyday Life’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 31, pp. 419–447.

Hull, M.S. (2012) Government of Paper: The Materiality of Bureaucracy in Urban Pakistan. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Rozakou, K. (2016) ‘Socialities of Solidarity: Revisiting the Gift Taboo in Times of Crises’, Social Anthropology, 24(2), pp. 185–199.

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