Navigation guide Refugee populations in the UK: Algerians - ICAR

‘Many people don’t even tell their parents that they have claimed asylum […] Some people have lived here
for ten years and even though they have a life threatening situation in Algeria, they don’t claim asylum.’ 85
• Those that do claim asylum find it extremely difficult to be cut off from their families in Algeria.
• Others associated claiming asylum with laziness since they wished to work and were unwilling to
take benefits. A 42 year-old man who had been undocumented for two years, having rejected the
possibility of claiming asylum, reported:
‘They pay for your house – I didn’t want that, I didn’t want that, really, I didn’t want that, because I can work,
I’m not lazy. That’s what I say, if you’re not lazy, you don’t need that.’ 86
• An Algerian refugee support worker reported that Algerians referred to the regular collection of
vouchers under NASS as ‘the shame’. 87
Undocumented status
• Estimates of the size of the Algerian population in the UK, based on ‘best guesses’ of NGOs and
individuals, and existing statistical data 88 suggest that there are somewhere between 20,000 and
25,000 Algerians in the UK. Statistical information suggests that approximately 10,000 of these are
legally resident. 89 Therefore somewhere around 60% of Algerians in the UK may have no legal
status.
• Legal status is increasingly significant in the UK since without it access to many basic services is
denied. In addition to services such as health and education, a number of other issues arise from
legal status that have serious implications for the life of Algerians in the UK. The two most
significant are that financial management is problematic as it is impossible to open a bank account
and difficult to cash pay-cheques, and that residence is extremely precarious as detention and
deportation can occur at any time.
Detention and deportation
• Since the early 1990s, Algerian asylum seekers have been more likely to be detained than the
average for all groups of asylum seekers in the UK. Asylum seekers are obviously not
undocumented but there is a link, since undocumented Algerians are likely to request asylum if
they are discovered by police or immigration services. If an individual claims asylum after arrest for
85 Collyer, M. (2002) ‘Explaining change in established migration systems: the movement of Algerians to France and
the UK’ University of Sussex, DPhil thesis, bound and recorded at the British Library.
86 Collyer, M. (2002) ‘Explaining change in established migration systems: the movement of Algerians to France and
the UK’ University of Sussex, DPhil thesis, bound and recorded at the British Library.
87 Collyer, M. (2002) ‘Explaining change in established migration systems: the movement of Algerians to France and
the UK’ University of Sussex, DPhil thesis, bound and recorded at the British Library.
88 2001 British census, acquisitions of citizenship and number of asylum applicants. It is not possible to tell exactly what
status these people have, though we know that since 1991, 1009 Algerians have been granted refugee status (see
statistics section).
89 This number cannot be exact as there is no basis for cross-referencing different sources of statistical information. For
example it is likely that there is some overlap between Algerians granted refugee status and those granted British
citizenship a few years later but the size of this overlap can only be estimated.
Navigation guide to refugee populations: Algerians
©ICAR 2004, moral rights Michael Collyer
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