The thesis explores lived experiences of sexual minority asylum seekers and refugees in the UK and the analysis emerges from a two-year long ethnography with 60 people. I chose to focus on sexuality in the context of asylum in order to trace parallelisms and differences amongst the conditions of subalternity to which non-heteronormative subjects can be exposed in different geo-political locations. In the process I seek to: i) understand the specificity of the experiences of identification and belonging of people claiming asylum for fear of persecution in their countries of origin because of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity, and ii) to elicit and examine the migratory experience from the asylum claimant's standpoint within the structural constrictions emerging from the current UK migration regime. The thesis consists of two main analytical trajectories. First, I examine how the migratory experience of the studied sexual minority migrants is located within a set of humanist discourses that privileges suffering and trauma as the most potent way for the subject to receive state protection. In this regard, I introduce a critique of humanitarianism insofar as sexuality (as a rights-claim object) comes under scrutiny in the context of migration control practices and discourses. Further, by examining UK law I ask how non-heteronormative lives are construed in the asylum determination process, from the initial stage of a claim to the end of it, and how sexuality travels, namely how it is translated, in such sites. Second, I elaborate on the structural discourses explored throughout the thesis by putting them into direct dialogue with the findings arising from the ethnography. Within this space respondents' biographical accounts highlight how being situated in liminal socio-political and legal interstices produc.es precarious forms of life. The study contributes to current migration and sexuality scholarship by offering a critique of recent formations of neocolonial political discourses with the emergence of sexuality as a legitimate field for claiming rights in the realm of international relations. In this regard, my analytical endeavour is not dedicated solely to exploring respondents' supposed subalternity in their countries of origin, rather my focus is to examine the situations that produce states of subalternity whilst living in Britain. I seek to highlight that the passage from oppression in one's country to liberation in the UK is much more complex than how it is dominantly portrayed in the current global ethical-political stage.

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My thesis on asylum dispersal is written within an emotionally charged atmosphere concerning immigration, asylum, multiculturalism and Islamic extremism. In this climate of unreasoned attitudes towards asylum seeking generally, my main aim was to qualitatively uivestigate, via one case study area - Romantown - the persistent policy and political problem of where to place asylum seekers.

The UK, along with most European countries, has implemented deten-ent policies including, but not limited to, compulsory dispersal that, arguably, aim to deter potential economic migrants from entering its territory. This study of dispersed governance of asylum in the UK is organised into eight chapters. The first two provide, respectively, a review and analysis of the literature and a discussion of the methodology employed. Chapters 3,4 and 5 provide an analysis of the policy and practice of dispersal of asylum seekers in the UK and examines their impact on some of the most ssential needs of asylum seekers; accommodation, employment and legal services. Chapter 6 explores the effects of dispersal on integration and community cohesion, while Chapter 7 investigates the impact of dispersal on the government's capacity to manage asylum under partnership. The study's main findings are summarized in Chapter 8.

This thesis draws upon ethnographic work in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, to interrogate asylum as a spatial experience. Arguing that the routine framing of asylum as either an issue of national securitisation or cosmopolitan and humanitarian ethics serves to overlook the visceral and prosaic practices of living asylum in contemporary Britain, this thesis develops an account of responding to asylum seekers through everyday life which is immersed in the tacit sociality, and spatiality, of the city. Through detailing the complex negotiations which emerge as asylum seekers encounter and create an array of spaces within the city, this thesis considers how accounts of sovereignty, welcome, charity and generosity are actively performed, worked upon and fractured within daily practices of hospitality. Here national accounts of 'domopolitics' and 'secure borders' intermingle and conflict with emergent modes of ethical sensibility, as individuals respond to asylum seekers through a series of shared spaces of encounter and accomplishment. Of central importance throughout these chapters is the need to take seriously both the unique and fragile experiences of space which form part of asylum as a lived experience, and the inherently negotiated, tentative and contextual nature of these spaces of asylum, riven as they are by differing visions of asylum, ethics and politics. Five chapters seek to document and approach these spaces of asylum as sites of affective belonging, and each draws together a range of accounts from social and political theory in order to engage with Sheffield's diverse politics of asylum. In doing so these chapters fuse a series of research encounters, engagements and events with an account of politics, ethics and social theory which is emergent from the contextual negotiations of the present. Achapter on Sheffield's past illustrates how national accounts of asylum as a begrudging act of welcome infuse the negotiations of the city with asylum seekers in the present. This is then counterposed in the following chapter by an account of Sheffield as a 'City of Sanctuary', built upon a micropolitics of cultural change and a recognition of the city's relational responsibilities. Three chapters then focus on specific spaces within the city. The first of these examines the spatial negotiations of two weekly drop-in centres for asylum seekers, suggesting that these may act as sites of ethical improvisation and tacit learning. The second extends these ethical developments into the public spaces of Sheffield, arguing that a minimal politics of access and 'small achievements' arises from the particular fusion of encounter, material and memory thrown up by being among others in the city. The third of these chapters considers the varied spaces of accommodation for asylum seekers in Sheffield, arguing that these act as key constraints on an affective connection to the city and to others. These chapters develop an account of asylum as a lived, practiced and felt experience not simply occurring in Sheffield, but occurring through Sheffield. Through these chapters I then develop a possible 'politics of becoming' for asylum seekers, grounded in the opportunity for mutual and generous encounters with others, a reassertion of sanctuary as a public good and a recognition of the relational responsibilities asylum as a spatial connection throws up.

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There is a crisis of asylum in Africa. In response to large and protracted refugee populations, declining donor assistance and a range of related security concerns, a significant number of African states have limited the asylum they offer to refugees. Some states have closed their borders to new arrivals and pursued early repatriations. Many other states have contained refugees in isolated and insecure camps. Given the scale of this crisis, the global pressures on asylum, and the disproportionate share of the global refugee burden borne by Africa, understanding the responses of African states poses an important challenge. A critical examination of the factors influencing the refugee policies of African states is, however, strikingly absent from the scholarly literature. The objective of this thesis is to address this gap by examining the responses of Kenya, Tanzania and Guinea to the arrival and prolonged presence of significant refugee populations. Drawing on field research, this thesis argues that the asylum policies of the three cases are the result of factors both related to the presence of refugees, such as burden sharing and security concerns, and unrelated to the presence of refugees, such as foreign policy priorities, democratization, economic liberalization and the sense of vulnerability experienced by many regimes in Africa. Drawing on a political history of the post-colonial African state, this thesis argues for an approach that recognizes the politics of asylum in Africa. Such an approach highlights the importance of incorporating the host state into any examination of asylum in Africa and the predominant role that broader political factors play in the formulation of asylum policies. This is not to suggest that factors such as the protracted nature of refugee populations, levels of burden sharing and security concerns are irrelevant to the study of asylum in Africa. Instead, the thesis argues that such factors are very relevant, but need to be understood in a more critical way, mindful of the political context within which asylum policies are formulated. This approach leads to important lessons not only for the study of asylum in Africa, but also for the future of the refugee protection regime in Africa.