The issue of immigration and refugee policies and their results has been thoroughly analysed (e.g. Rabczuk, 2002; Sales, 2007). However, if one looks at refugee centres in the EU as educational sites, new perspectives emerge. They are important entrance points to the host society. People working there are can be perceived as key figures in the process of socialisation to the new society asylum seekers enter. Through this initial socialisation the future of intercultural dialogue can be established.

Through studies of the processes of criminalisation and limitation of external migration to the EU, it seems particularly important to study new contexts of integration and intercultural education (in its broadest meaning). Differentiation of policies applicable to settled migrants and to the new wave of asylum seekers and refugees, as well as a phenomena visible in the refugee procedures which is known as “culture of disbelief” (Jubany, 2011), draws one's attention to other possible factors influencing the future of intercultural dialogue within the EU.

The aim of this poster is to present results of a study focused on the roles people working with asylum seekers take and what meanings they ascribe to their relations with asylum seekers, refugee centres and integration issues within the broader perspective of multicultural society. What is more, the legal (but also institutional) framework of migration policies in the EU and Poland will also be included.

Refugee centres' workers are state officials - is their practice the embodiment of state politics? How do they perceive their role themselves? It seems that it is the way law and regulations are (re-)defined and implemented in the centres which might play a crucial role in the development of intercultural dialogue and integration processes.

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