Introduction

Dispersal away from London and the South East brought with it questions around access to legal representation, language support, housing, medical care, education, training and employment (Audit Commission, 2000a). This chapter looks at access to services, demonstrating how temporary access to services added to the liminal experience of asylum seekers. The changing entitlements of asylum seekers since the early 1990s are outlined, highlighting how the power to define who can access welfare and other services is now based on legal status. The obligations of agencies contracted to the Home Office to facilitate access to services are explored using qualitative data relating to specific services in dispersal locations. Once gender and the intangible barriers to access services have been explored, emergent issues in dispersal locations such as services for domestic violence and mental health are identified.

It is argued that the temporary nature of services, along with the monitoring and reporting roles of accommodation providers, maintain asylum seekers in a liminal state. It is also argued that the priority for good-quality legal, accommodation and translation services is indicative of the weaknesses of the dispersal and asylum systems.

Changing entitlements and tangible barriers

The decline in entitlements to rights for asylum seekers since the 1990s has occurred in parallel to an overall qualitative shift in the environment towards asylum seekers. Dwyer (2005, p 636) argues that key principles relating to accessing national welfare rights with ‘notions of need and entitlement’ have become secondary to ‘issues of claim and contribution’. For asylum seekers, this shift has become particularly acute with asylum legislation progressively changing entitlements for accessing financial services, accommodation and the entitlement to work. Burchardt (2004) charted a decade of declining entitlements up to the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 (see Table 6.1).

The Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 excluded asylum seekers from a number of mainstream benefits. Due to the provision of separate support specifically for asylum seekers, they also do not qualify for several other benefits. These tangible losses and incremental reductions of entitlements formally exclude asylum seekers from the rights and benefits available to those ordinarily resident within the UK.