ABSTRACT
In the first decade of the new century, refugees and asylum seekers in the Global North have faced a challenging environment in which to negotiate their rights to asylum, integration and citizenship. In the recipient communities, the new arrivals are increasingly associated with negative concepts such as welfare dependency, social disharmony and terrorism and are viewed as people who should be kept at a safe distance if not actively expelled. These associations are shaped and reinforced through government and media discourses which focus on the deviancy of asylum seekers and the dependency of refugees. At the same time, there is ever greater insistence on the rapid and successful integration of immigrants as productive, self-sufficient and responsible members of the wider community. In this chapter we explore two aspects of the contemporary environment — the fragmentation and racialization of the refugee label and the shift from multiculturalism to integration as the preferred mode of incorporating newcomers, associated with integration being contrasted with segregation as its opposite.
