ABSTRACT
The number of people seeking asylum worldwide has almost doubled in the last two years. What is being described daily as a humanitarian crisis is being responded to by governments with increasingly punitive measures, aimed to deny people the right to cross borders and claim asylum. This chapter explores what it means to care in such an uncaring context with a focus on social work practice with people seeking asylum. It begins by exploring the history of the concept of asylum and the development of the much more recent right to asylum. Then the contemporary experience of seeking asylum is examined, with particular attention paid to the Australian context, which has some of the harshest policies directed at asylum seekers in the world. The chapter then analyses what it means for social workers to care in such a context. Drawing on this analysis, the chapter concludes with the argument that caring is not enough, and that for an ethics of care to have value for social work practice with people seeking asylum it needs to move towards a critical ethics of care which pays attention to the principles of human rights and social justice as well as the caring relationship, incorporating an intersectional analysis and a commitment to critically reflective practice.
