Hannah Pool Wins Alice Amsden Best Book Award

For The Game: The Economy of Undocumented Migration from Afghanistan to Europe (Oxford University Press, 2025) MPIfG senior researcher Hannah Pool has recently been awarded the Alice Amsden Best Book Award 2026. With the award, the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE) honors scholarly books that bring innovative perspectives and fresh theoretical or methodological approaches to socioeconomic research. The jury was unanimous in selecting Pool’s work from over 40 submissions and drew particular attention to the methodological discipline and originality of her research. The book is based on an ethnography conducted over a ten-month period during which Pool accompanied Afghan asylum seekers en route from Iran to Europe via Turkey and the Balkan route. Its title, The Game, references the language those undertaking the journey use for their frequent attempts to cross borders and seek refuge in Europe. Centering her analysis on the “moral economy” of undocumented migration, Pool explores the social norms, expectations, and obligations that structure the lives of the refugees along the way. Her study provides valuable insights into the collective practices, mutual support, and social relationships that facilitate undocumented migration, and into the uncertainty, dependency, and the threat of exploitation that accompany them. Hannah Pool has been a researcher in the Economic Sociology Research Area of the MPIfG since 2022, where she works at the intersection of migration, mobility, money, and borders. Her book is based on her doctoral dissertation, which she completed at the MPIfG.