The Game of Chance: Unaccompanied Minors in Italy and the Risk of ‘Going Back to Square One’

by Sarah Walker, Antonio Mirizzi, Chiara Suanno and Hardi Jahateh

‘We take the back way because Europe has closed the front door… We cannot get on a plane or get a visa to study, so we do what we can.’

Adama, 17, Gambian

This comic book is part of Adama’s desire for his story to be told: so that ‘people will listen to [my story] and learn a bit from it’ and ‘know how the life goes on’. It is an attempt to portray ‘how the life goes on’ for young West African men who sought a better future in Italy by taking the increasingly dangerous and criminalised route across the Mediterranean Sea to Europe, known in Gambia as ‘the back way’.

Between 2014 and 2018, more than 70,000 unaccompanied minors arrived in Italy by sea, about 90% of whom were boys between fifteen and seventeen years old. The young men this comic focuses on are just some of those who made this journey and survived. Many do not: according to the International Organization for Migration’s (IOM)Missing Migrants Project, since 2014, more than 20,000 people have lost their lives trying to cross this maritime route, the most dangerous in the world. The real number is likely to be far higher. Indeed, the hardening of European border controls has resulted only in an increase in irregular migration and border violence.

This comic book is based on the lived experiences of eight young men (five Nigerians and three Gambians) who, like Adama, came to Italy to seek asylum as minors (under eighteen) in the hope of a better future. Their experiences emerged through ethnographic research conducted by Sarah Walker (a British researcher) as part of her PhD (funded by the Economic and Social Research Council) and a follow-on postdoctoral research project (funded by the Leverhulme Trust, UK). The research was first carried out in an asylum accommodation centre for male unaccompanied minors in Bologna called ‘Giallo’ (2017–18). In 2022–23, a follow-up project was conducted to trace the lives of some of the young men once they had left the centre as ‘adults’. Dialogues are taken from interviews conducted with the young men, and the comic book tells the story from their point of view. It was produced in collaboration with Hardi Jahateh, who himself came to Italy as a minor seeking asylum. Some of Hardi’s drawings reflecting on his life are also included in the comic book's pages.

Importantly, this book shows how the support that the young men received once they were considered adults assisted them to move forward in Bologna, despite the multiple barriers they faced as racialized migrants in Italy. It shows how they experienced first-hand the violence generated by stereotypes and racism. By contrast, for young migrants who receive support only as ‘children’, turning eighteen is often a frightening prospect: once they become ‘adults’ they risk losing support, accommodation, and potentially the right to stay in their host country. Sadly, this situation is only worsening as support decreases.

The comic book reflects on the risk of going back to square one that is faced by young migrants in Italy. It is as if they are trapped in a game of chance, such as Snakes and Ladders. Conversely, the comic book highlights how, when access to social and educational training programmes is provided, this risk can be minimized. This allows young migrants greater possibilities of achieving a better future as adults. The comic both draws attention to the invisibilised space of the accommodation centre for unaccompanied minors, but also, more importantly, of life for former unaccompanied minors on the outside, once they are considered ‘adults’.

The full comic book is available below.

Further reading

ISMU Foundation (2019) At a crossroads: Unaccompanied and separated children in their transition to adulthood in Italy. Rome: UNICEF, UNHCR and IOM. Available at: https://www.ismu.org/en/at-a-crossroads/

Chase, E., Sigona, N. and Chatty, D. (eds) (2023) Becoming Adult on the Move: Migration Journeys, Encounters and Life Transitions. Cham: Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26534-1

Walker, S. (2025) ‘“A permit to stay, but no place to stay”: Former unaccompanied minors experiences of rental racism as “adults” in Bologna’, MONDI MIGRANTI [Preprint], (2025/3) https://cris.unibo.it/handle/11585/1037049

Walker, S. and Gunaratnam, Y. (2021) ‘Young, unauthorised and Black: African unaccompanied minors and becoming an adult in Italy’, Journal of Sociology, 57(3), pp. 690–706. https://doi.org/10.1177/1440783321993918

Contributor biographies

Action30 is a group of researchers and artists who investigate new forms of racism and fascism via analogy with the 1930s, experimenting with hybrid forms of sharing culture: graphic novels, performance-debates, essay-shows, multimedia workshops and live installations.

Antonio Mirizzi debuted as a comic artist in 2017 with the self-published volume Bologna Indegna. He has worked as a writer and illustrator for publishers such as Hazard, Pearson, Gallucci, Il Battello a Vapore and Tentacle, while also continuing to be involved in the world of self-publishing. He holds a PhD in comics studies and has taught at the Arena del Fumetto in Bologna since 2016.

Chiara Suanno is a biology researcher who doubles as a comic artist by night. She studied illustration and comics at the Arena del Fumetto in Bologna, and has contributed to a number of self-published comics.

Hardi Jahateh is Gambian and has lived in Italy for ten years. He gained his Health Assistant Diploma in Italy. He now works in a nursing home whilst also studying at university for a degree in Educational Science. He is interested in migrants' rights and spreading awareness of the difficulties we face. He draws to express himself.

Sarah Walker is a postdoctoral researcher at LIMINAL, University of Bologna. Her research is underpinned by a social justice ethos and informed by working for over five years as a support worker with refugees in London. Employing arts-based creative research methods, her work examines the intersections of mobility, youth, race, gender, and the environment.