The Politics of Childhood and Asylum in the UK

Abstract

This article considers the general treatment of asylum‐seeking families with children in the UK, focusing on the government's practices and public reactions to these measures. It first describes both the exclusive asylum framework, based on institutionalised suspicion, welfare restrictions and detention, and the inclusive child policy framework, based on recognising children's rights and protecting all children. The article then investigates the implications for policy‐making that these radically opposed regimes have for those who fall between the two categories, i.e. asylum‐seeking children. To this end, we examine more closely three asylum practices — Section 9 of the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Act 2004, detention of accompanied asylum‐seeking children in immigration removal centres and removals. Our analysis indicates that the government's attempt to fully include families within the restrictive asylum framework has been somewhat frustrated by the mobilisation of a wide range of public actors. As such, despite its supposedly ‘legally unconstrained’ room for action, the government has recently agreed to partly review its policy standards for asylum‐seeking families, apparently aware of the potentially damaging effects of being seen as disregarding children's rights and needs. On the other hand, the government does not seem inclined to question the current asylum framework and the assumptions on which it is based. Consequently, the asylum system for families is likely to remain based on ad hocarrangements conditioned by the scale of the protests.