Migration and Asylum

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 movement continue to reflect the reasons why people migrate today albeit the United Kingdom (UK), amongst other countries, have 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 has 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 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.