“Jungle of Calais”: the daily life of migrants is deteriorating but the dream of England persists

Nothing remains of the “old jungle”, dismantled just five years ago. On the land of the dunes, outside the city center of Calais, vegetation has grown and the signs prohibiting anyone from settling, posted following the eviction of nearly 10,000 people, are still there. , washed out by the rain.

Like every other day in Calais, Sunday October 24, the gendarmerie convoy leaves, at the stroke of eight in the morning, to tour the evictions from places of life. At the time of “the jungle”, name given by the exiles themselves to these dunes on the outskirts of the city, more than ten thousand people survived in a slum which extended over several hectares.

Daily evictions and confiscated tents

Today, the public authorities have an assumed goal: to avoid the installation of camps, which they soberly call “fixing points”. For that they proceed to their expulsion almost daily. If there is no longer a shanty town strictly speaking, several small camps have sprung up on the wasteland between Coquelles, Calais and Marck, currently housing two thousand exiles waiting to cross to England. During these evictions, the tents are confiscated and often, along with the personal effects of the exiles.

Emma, ​​coordinator of the Human Rights Observer project supported by the Auberge des Migrants, notes an increase in the rate of evictions. “In recent months the pace of expulsions has been different, they no longer come every two days like last year but really every day, in the morning and sometimes even in the afternoon”, specifies the activist who does not want her last name is published.

This incessant rhythm aims to discourage exiled people from settling in Calaisis, “it causes a real weariness and fatigue of exiled people, but people always come back a few minutes after the eviction, even if they no longer have tents. . There is not always a solution of accommodation and often they do not recover the business which is seized to them after the evictions. This year, 72% of the people could not recover their personal belongings of value “, underlines Emma.

“Concretely, Calais is a lawless area”, supports Wela Ouertani of La Cabane Juridique. “Everything that happens is illegal, but the state always manages to justify everything with legal prowess. It’s a very well-established machine. We only ask the state to respect the law.” And to take the example of daily expulsions, “in the Calais context, the shelters of people after expulsions are forced, therefore illegal. The expulsions are carried out in flagrante delicto and normally, this procedure does not allow a person to be expelled. But the state justifies itself by saying, ‘we found a crime, the occupation of land, so we went to ask people to leave the land and people left voluntarily.’ ‘they can do it every day, ”she explains.

Explosion in the number of attempted boat trips

Consequence of this daily life: since the dismantling of the great jungle, the number of attempts to cross by boat has exploded. Loan Torondel, humanitarian worker, is the author of an independent report on these crossings between 2018 and 2021. “[Les traversées en bateaux] were very rare at the time of the jungle, there were mostly individual attempts. In 2018, the phenomenon appeared and then took on a considerable scale, “he observes.

>> To reread : “I try to get on the canoes at the last moment, for free”: the migrants ready to do anything to reach England

“One of the causes is the securing of all the car parks and the port. Trucks have become a more difficult passageway to access,” explains the humanitarian. Today, people try out by boat and truck, depending on the weather or the day. The deterioration of living conditions in the camps also creates great stress for people because they never feel safe. It pushes them to take risks to cross “.

Avoid “fixing points”

Since September 2020, a controversial prefectural decree has also been renewed each month by the authorities, prohibiting any distribution of food and drink by associations not mandated by the State in a large part of the city center of Calais.

Other measures have been taken by the authorities to avoid “fixing points”. On one of the camps near Coquelles, the prefecture services also repeatedly installed rocks weighing several tons, to prevent food distributions and the filling of a tank of one thousand liters of water that benefited nearly six hundred people. Once displaced by exiled people and a few associations, larger rocks were driven into the ground overnight, a few days later.

Today, daily life in the Calais camps is very different than in 2016, during the time of the slum. Living conditions have deteriorated and the almost daily evictions have even been denounced in a long report by the NGO Human Rights Watch published this month. After its publication and to denounce this “harassment” of the authorities against exiled people, three people went on hunger strike since Monday, October 11.

>> To reread: In Calais, the hunger strike of a Jesuit priest and two activists continues