[T]here is a genuine problem with asylum in this country … The proper way forward is to do what we are doing: introducing tough new asylum measures that will allow genuine asylum seekers through, but will halt those bogus asylum seekers who do nothing but harm to the cause of proper asylum seekers. (Blair HC Deb 2 February 2000: vol. 343 col 1048–103)

The figure of the refugee in Britain has occupied a precarious position over the last 100 years. Governments have been open to providing hospitality to the refugee – an individual who can apply for asylum ‘owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion’ (UNHCR 1951). Indeed, the consecutive governments have been at pains to proclaim Britain's longstanding humanitarian record in relation to refugees (Stevens 1998b: 9). Yet, since 1990, when annual refugee applications spiked at 26,205 (Hawkins 2014), consecutive British governments have been caught between positioning the refugee as a humanitarian figure in need of refuge, in what has been termed a ‘paradoxical response’ (Gibney 2014).

Through consecutive British governments, an idealised categorisation of the would-be refugee has emerged. The resulting product has been the emergence of a tangible one-size-fits-all figure of a genuine refugee. This figure has been upheld as honourable, legal and legitimate. Governments since the 1990s have presented the genuine refugee as the pinnacle of refuge: they will have particular experiences, adhere to certain modes of travel and be knowledgeable of the national asylum rules. This figure is upheld as the true refugee. Anyone unable to meet these criteria of the genuine refugee are labelled as bogus, as failed asylum seekers or more commonly now, as economic migrants.