ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on social work, an activity that in the recent past has been extraordinarily explicit in its stand on anti-racist and anti-discriminatory practice, but which has been at times rather naive about its contradictory positioning, and which latterly has been increasingly drawn into a disciplinary and surveillance role in policing the poor, to the extent of having now been 'tamed'. It describes some of the ways this has taken place and in the wake of the 1996 and 1999 immigration legislation and examines moves by the Home Office towards enlisting the co-operation of welfare professionals in identifying and excluding those not entitled to services. The chapter considers the implications for people subject to immigration controls. Welfare is always a site of struggle in discourses about, and allocation of resources in relation to, issues of class, race and gender.
