In Het Grote Migratiespel (the Big Migration Game), students are challenged to take on the role of one of the actors involved with a wave of refugees travelling from Syria to Europe. The students have to make decisions concerning the migrants with the ultimate aim to determine how many migrants eventualy will reach Europe. The game can be played in one up to two hours.

Het Grote Migratiespel has been developed to represent some of the cases studied by the bachelor Public Administration that is taught at the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs. By playing the game, students become familiar with the complexity of societal problems such as the refugee crisis.

How to play the game

A class with students is divided into five groups and are given the role of one of the following actors: the European Union, the Government of Turkey, the Government of The Netherlands, the Smugglers, and a family of refugees traveling to Europe. The actors are confronted with a group of 200 Syrians that are about to start on their journey to 'heaven on earth': Europe. In four rounds, the five actors have to make decisions that will have an influence on group of refugees. The actors are presented with different choices concerning the migrants in Turkey, in the Mediterranean and eventually on the border with the European Union.

In every round, the students are given three ‘action cards’ with different options. In collaboration with their group members, the students need to make an informed choice for one of the three options. Once each group has made their choice, the chosen actions and consequences of these actions are discussed in class. Every chosen action influences the number of migrants travelling: the number can go up or down. After every round, the supervisor reports the results: how many migrants are travelling to Europe?

The game revolves around the number of migrants that reach Europe. The number of refugees depends on the choices made by the different actors. Whether this final number is ‘wrong’ or ‘right’ is also a matter for discussion among the students.

In Het Schipholspel (The Schiphol Game), students are presented with different security issues that can occur at Schiphol airport. Students need to decide how to react to these security issues. Collaboration is very important, because it is impossible to solve the security issues alone. During the game, the students have to make a trade-off between what risk is acceptable and which resources are proportional to reduce the risk. The game can be played in one up to two hours.

Het Schipholspel has been developed to represent some the cases studied by the bachelor Security Studies that is taught at the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs. By playing the game, students become familiar with the complexity of security issues.

How to play the game

Today is Schiphol’s busiest day of the year! For Schiphol, it is very important that this day runs smoothly. Should problems arise, thousands of passengers will suffer. The students are divided into teams. Each team is responsible for its own area in case of an emergency. It is important to guarantee the safety of all passengers. In order to do this, the teams must communicate with each other to avoid misunderstandings. But wait, there is more! A safety report on the situation at Schiphol was presented a few days ago. The report notes that there are a number of major structural problems at Schiphol that undermine the long-term safety of the airport. The students have to write a plan of action for one of the structural problems that occur at Schiphol.  A press conference has been scheduled for today. The journalists would like to hear more about the future safety of Schiphol.

After this hectic round, the students have to analyse safety risks. They do this both individually and in teams. Attention is given to assessing and dealing with safety risks.