'What More Do They Want' - Service Provision of Refugees and Asylum Seekers - Essay Example

Accordingly, it is imperative to embark upon an integration project as would successfully lead to the assimilation of this group into the national culture and society. As the research illustrates, integration can best be carried out through the provision of equitable access to public services and the exploitation of these services for the specific purpose of integration. According to the literature on the topic, the education and mental healthcare services are, within the context of the stated, defined as primary integration enablers.

Certainly the cost of integration may be quite high but the benefits of successfully integrating refugees and asylum seekers into British society are even higher. Apart from the fact that, as a nation-state, Britain has historically relied on waves of immigration as a means of building itself and, more importantly, strengthening its economy, immigrants bring a wealth of talent, experiences and skills with them as can effectively ensure their functioning as a constructive economic asset (Humphreys, 2001).

Despite this, however, Britain’s immigrants, as in her refugees and asylum seekers, are hardly awarded equitable access to essential community services, chief amongst which is education. The implication here is that the country’s refugees and asylum seekers are marginalised and their potential to positively contribute to the nation is severely constrained (Bocker and Havinga, 1998). The consequence, as Hames (2004) notes, is not limited to the fact that asylum seekers and refugees are denied equitable economic, social, political and educational opportunities but, that their marginalisation is leading to the evolution of a “dual Britannia” (92).

Britain’s asylum seekers and refugees, therefore, are not only being denied the realisation of their potential and the country their constructive exploitation as a valuable economic