The UK media's reporting of events in 2015 contained constantly evolving categorisations of people attempting to reach Europe and the UK, each with different implications for their treatment. A discourse analysis of UK media outputs charts the development of the terminology used to present the crisis and those people involved. First, “Mediterranean migrant crisis” was used to present those involved as “migrants” to be prevented from reaching Europe. Next, it became a “Calais migrant crisis” in which migrants were constructed as a threat to UK security and then the “European migrant crisis” an ongoing threat to Europe. Photographs of a drowned child led to a shift to a “refugee crisis” in which refugees were presented in a humane and sympathetic way. When terrorist attacks were linked with the crisis, refugees reverted to migrants. Findings are discussed regarding the impact of categorisation on debates about the inclusion and exclusion of refugees.

Refugee young people entering foster care face transitions as they settle into life in a new country and household. Drawing on findings from a study on foster care for refugee young people in England, this paper examines encounters and negotiations with the public worlds of the asylum system and foster care delivery within the intimate setting of the household and everyday domestic practices in foster care. The paper considers Derrida's neologism ‘hostipitality’ to explore challenges in hospitality in this context. The framework of ‘family practices’ is then applied to explore how foster carers and young people ‘did’ family in foster care. It was found that family practices were inhibited by tensions and challenges in the notion of ‘hospitality’, but family practices also offered opportunities to respond and promote young people's sense of belonging in the family in this environment. It concludes that hospitality at the threshold is necessary, but that the most successful foster care relationships were able to move through and beyond hospitality to relationships of family‐like intimacy.

Little is known about separated asylum seeking young people in foster care. This article addresses this gap by drawing together findings from qualitative research conducted with separated refugee and asylum seeking young people in two studies -one in England and one in Ireland. Focusing on the role of culture, the authors examine similar findings from the two studies on the significance of culture in young people's experiences of foster care. Culturally 'matched' placements are often assumed to provide continuity in relation to cultural identity. This article draws on young people's accounts of 'matched' and 'non-matched' placements to examine the extent to which this may be the case for separated young people. It was found that young people regarded it as important to maintain continuity in relation to their cultures of origin, but that cultural 'matching' with foster carers according to country of origin and/or religion was not the only means for achieving this. The authors suggest that practitioners need to adopt an individualised approach in determining whether a 'matched' or a cross-cultural placement best meets the various needs of separated young people, including their identity development needs.

This chapter examines the emotional politics of immigration and asylum policy. It first considers the role of emotions in social relations and in public life, with particular emphasis on the so-called affective turn in the social sciences and the relationship between emotion and reason. It then explores the role of emotions in immigration and asylum policy before defining and analysing the emotion of compassion. It also charts the rise of the politics of compassion in contemporary political discourse, along with the opportunities and challenges this produces for asylum and immigration policy. Finally, it looks at the proposal that a notion of compassion based on proximity and solidarity rather than distance and pity is more conducive to the realisation of social justice. The chapter argues that we need to take into account the role of ‘humanising’ emotions in the support and contestation of restrictive immigration policies.

In July 2012 the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition government introduced a new set of family migration rules. These rules set a sharp increase in the minimum income threshold for people sponsoring partners and children to join them in the UK. Consequently, there has been a significant reduction in the number of visas granted through the family migration route. This paper explores the themes of class in connection to transnational relationships and citizenship in the formulation of the new family migration rules, in the justifications that have been made for the rules and in the impact of the rules on applicants. It is argued that in the context of international migration and transnational relationships, class-based moralism and regulation has been entwined with exclusionary discourses on ethnicity, national belonging and citizenship and has been extended beyond the nation-state border towards the governing of particular kinds of international family.