As a legal concept, asylum is ill-defined and poorly understood yet its meaning is typically assumed to be solid by those who make reference to it. When I asked a group of final year undergraduate law students back in 1999 about the difference between asylum seekers and refugees they were, without exception, baffled. Some believed the terms to be synonymous. Others, the majority, believed that an asylum seeker was a label denoting illegality, applied to those that had entered without correct documents who then tried to assert, illegitimately, that they were fleeing persecution. The term refugee was understood as comprising both a factual statement to identify a person fleeing persecution, and a legal status, afforded to those that had demonstrated to the host state that their fear was legitimate. One may question the reason for the apparent confusion over the label ‘asylum seeker’. It is after all a rather straightforward statement of fact denoting a person who has left their country of origin and is seeking sanctuary elsewhere, ultimately through legal recognition as a refugee. The term asylum lacks a clear legal definition but established academic authority refers to durable international protection for refugees (as opposed to temporary or limited protection).1 Yet, it is clear that the distinction between refugees, asylum seekers and other migrants has long been blurred in the public mind.2 Ten years later I asked the same question to a different group of final year undergraduates studying Immigration and Race Relations. Most of this group of 30 were from families with recent migratory histories, and one might therefore have anticipated a greater understanding of such terms. Yet the same misconceptions arose. Undergraduate law students, with no prior knowledge of the subject, simply did not understand the label ‘asylum seeker’ and in many cases it was again associated with notions of illegality.