Dispersal, deprivation and data: asylum seekers and refugees since 1999

Abstract

In 2019, the existing contracts for housing dispersed asylum seekers will come to an end, therefore a new system of asylum accommodation and support is currently being developed. This research investigates the policy of dispersal, which has been implemented in the UK since 2000, by applying rigorous demographic methods and principles to the available data in order to contribute to a better understanding of the asylum settlement process. In particular, it explores the relationships between dispersal, deprivation and individual outcomes in the context of limited data.

Firstly, patterns of dispersal and deprivation are mapped to show the geographic spread of asylum seekers by support status compared to Local Authority deprivation levels, using Home Office Asylum Statistics and the English Indices of Multiple Deprivation. Findings confirm that settlement locations of asylum seekers housed by the government are different from those on subsistence only support, and reflect the policy aim to move settlement away from London. A more formal assessment of these relationships through cluster analysis highlights a distinct group of Local Authorities with high levels of dispersal and high deprivation.Analysis of the Survey of New Refugees identifies statistically significant differences between refugees who were and were not dispersed, but the context of high attrition and increasing time since collection (baseline surveys from 2005-07) limits its use moving forward. A systematic review of the feasibility of combining data on the refugee and asylum seeking population suggests that augmenting existing datasets, by adding an indicator of dispersal, has the potential to greatly increase the number of variables, and therefore the topics, available for analysis. Examples of this are illustrated using the Survey of New Refugees and Annual Population Survey data on reason for migration.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Jakub Bijak: orcid.org/0000-0002-2563-5040

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