Social welfare paradoxes for asylum seekers : challenges for human rights

Social welfare provision for asylum seeker boat arrivals creates challenges. Unless civil and political rights (first generation rights) are in place, provision of economic and social welfare (second generation rights) might be considered as an exercise in futility. The chapter examines this supposition from the perspective of immigration detention and its community equivalent. The chapter draws on the discipline of social work, where critiques of social work reveal associated tensions between care and control that mirror the human rights disjuncture. The indivisibility of human rights provides clarity to the contention that both sets of rights are integral to achieving the human dignity of asylum seekers.