Introduction

Public discourse and policy in Britain towards young refugees has been deeply ambivalent. On the one hand young refugees are seen as ‘at risk’ both as refugees who have endured difficult and sometimes traumatic circumstances and as vulnerable children who may also be separated from families and others who are able to care for them. On the other hand, as asylum seekers, they are presented as posing a risk to society. During the debate on the Green Paper Every Child Matters (DfES, 2003), the government pledged that this title applied to all children without exception. The imperatives of an increasingly restrictive immigration policy, however, have taken precedence over other considerations in government policy in this area, often to the detriment of the rights of these children. Immigration policy poses particularly sharply the dichotomy between care and control or risk and protection in policy and practice. Since the early 1990s there has been an unprecedented number of measures concerning asylum and immigration, with six major Acts since 1993. These have increased controls on the entry of asylum seekers and on their social rights while awaiting a decision on their application. The implications of these measures for children's rights have been among the most strongly opposed during the passage of this legislation.

Asylum seekers are increasingly represented, in both official and popular discourse, as a threat to society. This supposed threat has several dimensions. They are seen as a burden on social services and housing, an argument used to justify the system of compulsory dispersal and the deterrent effect of benefit restrictions. They are presented as endangering the social order and the ‘British way of life’. Asylum seekers, whose numbers are unpredictable, are also presented as hampering official attempts to manage migration on the basis of Britain's economic interests (Flynn, 2005). After 11 September, they have been seen, in even more threatening terms, as potential terrorists. The 2001 Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act, passed in the wake of these attacks, introduced new measures to restrict the rights of asylum seekers who might be suspected of involvement in terrorism. This association of asylum seekers with risk was intensified in London in July 2005, as it was revealed that two of the failed London bombers had been granted asylum in Britain.