Constructing Asylum Seeking Families

Abstract

In this paper I show how families of asylum seekers are constructed by members of the public. A discourse analysis is conducted on a UK internet message board where members of the public were asked to comment on councils’ decisions not to implement Section nine of the 2004 Asylum and Immigration Act. This is a ruling which allows children to be separated from their failed asylum seeker parents. The nature of these asylum-seeking families, which are potentially threatened by this law, comes to be constructed in two opposing ways, utilising two different repertoires: first, as a loving family and second, as a unit for breeding. The loving family repertoire normalises the asylum seekers in question, which reduces the ‘us and them’ dichotomy often found in talk about asylum seekers and appeals to humanitarian arguments in support of asylum seekers and against section nine. By contrast the breeding repertoire dehumanises these families and undermines their legitimacy. This rhetorically allows for the separating of these families and so justifies this harsh treatment of asylum seekers. I discuss the implications of these findings for the understanding of asylum seekers and in terms of possible resistance to anti-asylum talk.