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The Direct Provision Regime

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State Power and Asylum Seekers in Ireland

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Abstract

Introduced in April 2000, Direct Provision and Dispersal (DPD) was a new policy regime designed to manage what was perceived and presented as a burgeoning crisis of asylum seeker immigration. Housed in the Department of Justice, which has historically been responsible for both immigration and security, the asylum process until 2016 enveloped three major administrative bodies: the Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner (ORAC), which deals with asylum applications; the Refugee Appeals Tribunal (RAT), which dealt with appeals made by asylum seekers concerning their applications; and the Reception and Integration Agency (RIA), which was responsible for housing and maintaining asylum seekers while their applications were processed. Replacing the existing statutory provision with a system of departmental fiat, the DPD involves the coercive dispersal of asylum seekers away from Dublin to regional centres across the country, the replacement of regular welfare (cash) payments with centrally allocated food aid and housing, and the administrative separation of asylum seekers from regular welfare claimants and recipients.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    As Giddens notes: ‘Disciplinary power’ as described by Foucault depends perhaps primarily upon surveillance in the sense of information-keeping, especially in the form of personal records of life histories held by the administrative authorities. But it also involves surveillance in the sense of direct supervision. In this sense prisons and asylums share some of the generalized characteristics of modern organizations, including the capitalistic work place, but a range of other organizations as well (Giddens 1985: 184).

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  1. University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Steven Loyal

  2. University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    Stephen Quilley

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Loyal, S., Quilley, S. (2018). The Direct Provision Regime. In: State Power and Asylum Seekers in Ireland. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91935-5_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91935-5_6

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