Asylum-seekers in the UK: Implications for social service involvement

Since 1996, destitute asylum-seekers have been entitled to seek assistance from Social Services Departments (SSDs) under the 1948 National Assistance Act. There is some evidence that SSDs are struggling to define their duties to this user-group. Recent commentary has focused on the resource difficulties presented by the recent increase of asylum-seekers requesting help following legislative changes in welfare arrangements to asylum-seekers. This picture provides, however, only a partial account of the factors bearing on the special difficulties faced by SSDs. In this paper, other factors are teased out which contribute to these difficulties. These factors are rooted in wider structural processes such as the impact of globalisation on changing migration dynamics, as well as factors that operate at the micro-level such as the way asylum-seekers have been politically redefined, the ongoing rapid organisational changes in the welfare state, and the shills and knowledge base held by practitioners regarding the specific cultural, health and social needs of asylum-seekers. An objective in writing this paper is to stimulate further discussion on how to assist social services at strategic and practitioner levels, in dealing with the issues that arise for them in this area of work, and to raise awareness of the growing international dimension of the social problems they encounter. The paper begins by situating recent debates against a wider context of international migration and the political construction of asylum migration as problematic.