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This draws on an extensive review of academic and policy literature, as well as the authors¡¯ engagement with asylum seekers in the United Kingdom and in North Africa, to propose that policymakers adopt ¡°complexity theory¡±- identifying and explaining patterns of change and feedback effects across dynamics systems - to understand the decision-making process of asylum seekers.

This policy brief suggests that adopting a "complexity theory" can offer asylum seeker policies a more nuanced, holistic approach, challenging prevailing narratives that solely emphasize individual desires and often fuel political biases. 

This policy brief recommends several key policy actions: 

• Since asylum seeker decision-making is complex, non-linear, and multidimensional, policies should reflect the diverse range of factors that influence asylum seeker decision-making which is shaped by factors on many levels: individual, familial, political, national, and international.
• Asylum policies need to be grounded in an understanding of the contexts with which asylum seekers interact. Instead of analyzing asylum seeker decision-making in an atomistic manner, it needs to be understood as part of an adaptive process in complex social systems in which their beliefs, expectations, and decision-making adapt and change dynamically.  
• Asylum policies should reflect an understanding of more comprehensive micro-behavioural data and analyses which explain motivations as well as how asylum seekers process information.  
• Asylum policies need to account for perception and behavioural biases, such as confirmation bias. 

Access 'Complexity of Choice in Asylum Seeker Decision-making' .