Introduction

For centuries people, or migrants, have moved across the world to improve their life chances, to seek refuge, or due to consequences arising out of some kind of disaster. The causes of this past movement continue to reflect the reasons why people migrate today, albeit the UK, among other countries, has an ever-nuanced classification of ‘migrants’ which includes asylum seekers, refugees, family-joiners, third-country nationals, high-skilled migrants, guest workers and so on. Such classifications matter, and those who fall within particular groups are subject to particular, and potentially fluid, forms of immigration status which, in turn, impact on the support they can access from the state (Jordan and Brown, 2006). This chapter will provide an overview of how migration legislation and policy have been shaped in the context of the UK. It will also look at how political responses to migration and related policy frameworks have shaped the development of social welfare services, and the ways in which migrants can access these. It will do so by focusing specifically on those people who have migrated to the UK and are subject to particular vulnerabilities, namely asylum seekers and refugees. By drawing on the UK government's management of asylum the chapter moves on to explore the interaction of policies aimed at asylum seekers in the UK and how they ‘fit’ with the role of the social worker.

Definition difficulties

The discipline of ‘refugee studies’ is dominated by debates over definitions which attempt to classify various forced or involuntary migrants depending upon a variety of legal and political categories. These categories have practical significance, as each label affords certain international responsibilities and ‘identities’ to the holder (Boyle et al, 1998). Making the distinction is inevitably intertwined with how such individuals are treated in international and domestic law and policy. In popular terms, all such forced or involuntary migrants are referred to as ‘refugees’, but in legal terms this is actually quite a narrow category reflecting only those who can demonstrate a compatibility with the definition of a refugee outlined in the 1951 United Nations (UN) Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees.