The early part of the 21st century has been marked by widespread social upheaval and
geographical displacement of people. This book examines how refugees, asylum-seekers,
locals and professional refugee workers make sense of asylum and refuge in the context of
current UK asylum policies.

While the stated intention of the book is to “examine the chain of events and consequences
that the asylum seeker, or would be refugee” is required to negotiate on arrival in the UK and
“to understand the outcome of this process”(2), in fact the book focuses soley on “everyday
discourse” or talk by a small number of asylum seekers, professionals working in asylum
and British nationals. In Part I the authors briefly look at asylum-related research and set out
their data and their approach to analysing discourse. Part II examines contending …