Abstract
This thesis offers an investigation into the social construction and social control of the asylum 'problem' in the UK. It explores how asylum came to be constructed as a key social problem, how this process of problematisation influenced the development of a range of social control strategies and how their imposition has shaped subsequent developments. Asylum has been associated with a range of contemporary social problems and has become an issue through which wider insecurities are articulated. This study is based upon qualitative research combining semi-structured interviews with a range of actors involved in various ways in the asylum debate, along with documentary analysis of materials integral to the construction of the issue. This involved the analysis of accounts and the types of discourses that have been used to promote particular knowledge claims regarding asylum seekers. The findings of this research show that the problematic status of asylum is not an inevitable consequence of large numbers of recorded applications for political asylum, as is often postulated. Rather, it is the result of a range of claims making activities and interventions from a diverse body of actors and institutions. Integral to these findings is that the social control responses implemented to provide solutions to the problem themselves further contribute to asylum being viewed problematically. As such, the findings of this research are situated within a wider body of academic literature, including social constructionism and social control. The analysis of this study builds upon such works to provide an insight into how it is that contemporary social problems are constructed and how this can be directly related to the specific conditions of late-modern societies.