The Migration Journey
By: Manvir Dhaliwal, Joselyn Figueroa, Alex Laforteza, and Joseph Ngyuen
A Card Game that introduces you to the stessful health effects of coming to the US.
Game Overview
This game is designed to educate players of ages 10 and up on various migration journeys depending on one’s legal status. Legal status of immigrants is one of the primary issues that directly affect social determinants of health due to the stress of immigration, through determinants such as socioeconomic status, acculturation, intergenerational conflict, cultural constraints, and biological/behavioral transmission of trauma. This stress leads to higher cortisol levels, activating the HPA axis and becoming major factors in determining health rates in these communities. In this “migration journey,” we focus on the specific experiences of Latino-American migrants, and players will attempt to maintain their health by putting down chance card events that either lower their own cortisol levels or add cortisol levels on other players. The cortisol points listed on the cards are distributed to characters based on their status. “Chance” cards are given scenarios that can happen in the life of an immigrant which can affect them long-term, causing chronic stress, raising/lowering their cortisol levels, and ultimately affecting their health outcomes. Every chance card is a random event that can happen to a character. The goal of the game is to be alive after all the chance cards are put down, as well as to have lower cortisol levels than all other players in the game.