Finding Security and Safety in Schools

Abstract

One of the main concerns of social and educational research in the field has been the effects of different government policies and services on the integration of ASR children in the UK. Concerns, for example, have been expressed about the negative consequences of immigration policy on ASR children’s experiences within education.¹ As a result of dispersal, for example, a pattern of disruption and discontinuity, according to McDonald (1998) often features in their education. In addition they experience the continuous changes in asylum procedures and especially the growing use of welfare restriction as a means of control and deterrence (which we documented in Chapter 4). As a result of tightening controls, ASR children are more likely to experience poverty, mobility² and uncertainty in relation to their future, which in turn might affect their ability to access education, and to benefit from it. In effect, having parents who have restricted access to the welfare state and who, in addition, are not allowed to work, positions asylum-seeking children socially and economically as an underclass. Indeed, many ASR children have reported that they experienced an unsatisfactory standard of living, including financial hardship and inadequate accommodation (Candappa, 2002).

I wasn’t looking for sympathy or pity. I was just looking for equality. (Jamil, Year 10 refugee boy, City School)