Reticketing for Asylum Seekers

Project Background

New York City has provided compassionate care for more than 210,000 asylum seekers since 2022. The city, with a desire and obligation to provide shelter for newcomers, is experiencing severely strained resources as it attempts to house over 120,000 people in its shelter system.

One option available to asylum-seekers is reticketing, a service that offers a no-cost, one-way ticket to a chosen destination (within the USA or to another country), available voluntarily at key points during their journey. However, not all who are offered this ticket choose to use it. Many people make their own arrangements for housing after temporary shelter and some opt to return to the shelter system.

PPL is partnering with OASO and NYCEM to increase the number of asylum seekers who accept reticketing offers, thus supporting more asylum seekers to connect with communities outside of NYC for long-term support.

Hours of interviews

Site visits

What We Found

Inquiry Areas

What are asylum seekers’ needs and motivations when considering options for reticketing?
What are the obstacles or roadblocks asylum seekers see in moving to a new location?
How can the reticketing system better support asylum seekers’ transition from shelter to longer-term housing outside of New York City?

Research Approach

Our team traveled to different locations in the asylum-seeker services network in New York City to speak with asylum seekers, frontline staff, and subject matter experts. Through site observation, semi-structured interviews, and intercept interviews, we began to unpack asylum seekers’ needs and motivations when considering options for reticketing.

To facilitate our conversation with participants, we used design artifacts such as ecosystem maps, journey maps, and card-sorting activities.

What We Heard
We’ve learned that many factors influence asylum seekers’ decisions to remain in New York City or seek relocation elsewhere.

Those opting to stay cite the city’s abundant resources tailored to migrants, facilitated by its robust infrastructure and comprehensive public transportation network. Additionally, misconceptions about the asylum application process or concerns surrounding work authorization and travel documentation play a pivotal role in their decision-making process. For some, the idea of starting over in a new place after starting to settle in is scary, especially if they’ve accrued financial debt over the course of their journey to the United States.

On the other hand, asylees who opt to relocate often do so because they have friends and family elsewhere who can help them. Asylees may also be motivated to relocate if they hear of better job and housing options in other places. For some asylees, elements of New York City are not what they expected. Asylees cite the food, the weather, and the cost of living as elements that may drive them to relocate.

“Yes, [community-based organizations] are very important because sometimes when you go there they'll advise you and give you hope and encourage you.”

“Most of the guests here are from Africa and in Africa important information is [often] passed orally rather than through posters or visual. We recognized that we needed to talk to the guests, to connect with them and communicate that this aspect of reticketing is not hostile. (...) It's an opportunity.”

”I decided to come to New York because of the easy access to public transportation, unlike in other states. In other states, you have to have your own car and everything is farther away.

“They think that when you come and get a ticket [through the reticketing service], you're getting deported and that sometimes you have to pay for the ticket.”

“I started going through Google to look for where I can get assistance. One name kept appearing. I went to YouTube, and I saw some of her activities, you know, taking migrants, especially Spanish-speaking people, and resettling them. ”

“They told me, this is the city you can go to. It’s New York, it's a sanctuary. They can help you there. That's why I came here.”

Common Themes:

Identity and Culture Asylum seekers’ cultural and language backgrounds influence how they experience the reticketing process. Nuances like varying motivations for seeking asylum, contrasting communication customs in home countries, and differences in socio-economic and educational background impact asylees’ experience navigating the system.

Perceptions and Beliefs Asylum seekers have different perceptions and beliefs about New York City and what they imagine the reticketing service is about. Some mistakenly perceive reticketing as a form of deportation, while others believe it enables them to bypass visa requirements to travel to other countries. Service providers struggle to provide clarity as the rapidly evolving nature of asylum laws makes it difficult to up-to-date information.
Sources of Information Asylum seekers receive information from a patchwork of word-of-mouth, social media, and formal communication channels. Many asylum seekers do not know about reticketing even though the staff reports talking about it at various touchpoints. As a result, they often resort to social media like TikTok or informal channels like Whatsapp groups to receive the latest information.

Shared Needs
After identifying common themes and clustering insights from research, we narrowed in on three primary shared needs that correspond to the scope of this project: Mindful Delivery of Information, Connected Network of Communication, and Support for Reconnections. We identified two additional shared needs that, while outside of this project’s scope, are nevertheless important for future projects to explore: Wraparound Support Services, and Stable Postal Addresses. Based on these shared needs, our team developed a series of preliminary design concept areas and prototype ideas that we took back out into the field to co-design and refine with asylum seekers and staff.

What We Designed

After months of research and co-design, we finalized a set of tools including:

a Reconnections Guidebook to train frontline staff on facilitating the Reconnections process,
Reconnections Posters in English, Spanish, and French to increase awareness about the program among asylum seekers,
a Product Roadmap and Sample Content for a WhatsApp Group where the New York City asylum service network can share information,
and a Reconnections Branding Strategy that moves away from the term “Reticketing,” while unifying the service across touchpoints.

Reconnections Tools

Reconnections Guidebook and posters help educate asylum seekers and frontline staff about the reconnections program, while the WhatsApp Group content and Reconnections Branding Strategy help improve the messaging and communication around the program.

Over the next few months, we’ll be testing out these tools at shelters across New York City, with the ultimate goal of implementing them citywide. As part of our preparation for the pilot, we worked with our pilot partners at the Mayor’s Office of Asylum Seeker Operations (OASO), New York City Health + Hospitals (H+H), New York City Department of Homeless Services (DHS), New York City Housing Recovery Office (HRO), New York City Emergency Management (NYCEM), and the NYC Service Design Studio at the Mayor’s Office of Economic Opportunity (SDS) to solidify pilot locations, distribution logistics, and methods for feedback collection. We also co-created an implementation plan that provides guidance on use cases and placement tips to guide our partners in effectively using the Reconnections tools and materials.

In addition to implementation guidance, we provided personalized training to folks at the NYCO Service Design Studio to assist them in navigating the Reconnections tool package and using the brand toolkit to implement changes to the posters and guidebook.

Project Implementation

This project is currently piloting a set of new tools with the goal of scaling and implementing these tools in the coming months.

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Reticketing for Asylum Seekers

Partners & Funders

The Project

The Outcome

Project Background

What We Found

What We Designed

Project Implementation

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Projects

Reticketing for Asylum Seekers

Partners & Funders

The Project

The Outcome

Reticketing for Asylum Seekers

Partners & Funders

The Project

The Outcome

Project Background

What We Found

What We Designed

Project Implementation

Menu

Get in Touch

Interested in partnering with us?

Join Us

We’re always open to talking to folks with the skills, experience, and passion to join our team. Share your interest with us through our general application. To hear about future job announcements, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn or subscribe to our newsletter.

Follow Along

Social Media

Donate

We’re always open to talking to folks with the skills, experience, and passion to join our team. Share your interest with us through our general application.

To hear about future job announcements, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn or subscribe to our newsletter.