Crisis in Calais: France’s Human Rights Disaster
Over eight years after French authorities cleared the “Calais Jungle,” it remains a permanent site of tragedy, making it critical to understand what is behind the protracted crisis.
A young migrant covers himself with a survival blanket on a rainy day in Calais. | France 2024 © Stéphane Lavoué
Tear gas, riot gear, and bulldozers. All three belong nowhere near a migrant camp, yet in April of 2016 French officials employed this trifecta to demolish the “Calais Jungle” refugee camp in Northern France. Migrants living in the camps protested the decision to evict them from their homes by lighting their shelters on fire and performing hunger strikes. The French government was adamant they only removed 800 refugees from Calais during the demolition in 2016. Local NGOs, who served migrants in the “jungle” daily, put the number at 3000. What Human Rights Watch in 2016 considered a humanitarian crisis of global concern has since morphed into a crisis of silent abuse. Shedding light upon the realities in Calais is crucial to revealing the hypocrisy of French policymakers who continue to miss the mark on immigration policy. In 2024 Calais maintains its place as a host to shanty towns for migrants hoping to leave France; the humanitarian disaster French officials claimed to solve in 2016 remains a stagnant issue.
Calais’ Horrifying Legacy and Reality
Calais, a town on the northern border of France with a population of around 75,000, sits an almost equal distance via train from London and Paris. Despite its proximity to these global capitals, it has long been an outpost of humanitarian catastrophe and oppression for migrant communities, acting as a launching point for migrants who hope to flee the European continent for the UK. Informal migrant settlements proliferated across Calais and Dunkirk in the 1990s, growing steadily before reaching a brief peak in 2015. This was the year the “Calais Jungle” became a cause célèbre around the world due to the wide documentation of its horrid conditions. The term “jungle” is often used counter-hegemonically by migrants in the region to bring attention to the treatment they receive, “often to demonstrate that they [are]being ‘treated like animals.’” The migrant population in Calais has dramatically reduced since the 2016 dismantlement, sitting at around 1000 in early 2024. However, given that there is no official accommodation for migrants in the region, accurately tracking the number of migrants is essentially impossible. They remain scattered throughout Calais and Dunkirk—as French authorities regularly complete operations in the region to prevent Calais from amassing a large refugee population again. These missions that merely remove migrants from Calais and place them in different regions across France amount to abuse. One Syrian refugee explained to reporters from the Guardian that “[i]t is like the authorities think we are animals and they are taking us from one farm to another.” Keeping migrants out of Calais permanently is not possible, and subjecting them to abuse and forced relocation is not a worthwhile solution. France has created a crisis never before seen in mainland Europe and stands as the premier example of ignorance toward migrant rights across the continent.
France’s Neglect of Migrants
This past summer the far-right media in the UK picked up with an aggressive fervor a snapshot of French police standing on the shores of a beach in Calais. In the background of the photo, an inflatable raft of migrants was barely visible and out of focus. The French police on the shoreline, armed with riot gear, on the shoreline were painted as inept. The narrative promoted across the British right-wing media plays into the harmful portrayals of migrants and is counterproductive; the photo itself represents a larger issue: neglect. The police did not stand by letting migrants leave Normandy, they stood by as migrants risked their lives attempting to find safety they could not find in France. There is a larger issue of state failure to address mounting asylum claims or initiate processing for the countless migrants living in squalor across Northern France. The crux of this issue lies in the requirements for asylees in France, mainly the necessity of a permanent address to initiate an application. In Calais, there is no permanent state-run shelter such as those in the Île-de-France region (where Paris is located). Across France, there is only accommodation available for around 100,000 individuals awaiting asylum decisions which take an average of 6 months.
Rather than exploring options for permanent shelters in a region in which migrants are bound to reside, French authorities have taken up a strategy of systematic dismantlement of tent settlements or other temporary shelter solutions employed by migrants. Only once was an official temporary shelter constructed by Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) in response to harsh winter conditions. It lasted for two months. The more common reality in Calais is temporary and vulnerable accommodation that French officials deem illegal. The destruction of migrant shelters has become routine for French police in the region. It’s like clockwork: “characterized by roundups or manhunts organized every 48 hours, this strategy of police management of exile camps aims to dissuade people from settling and regrouping.” But still, tent settlements reestablish themselves and await the next dismantlement. This is far from a solution though, and it only gives the façade that French officials are taking action to address the crisis. If anything, the regularity of destruction in Calais worsens humanitarian conditions.
Beyond the destruction of migrant homes, officials in Calais also regularly interfere with the work of non-profit organizations in the region that serve migrant communities. In 2020 there was a court-ordered ban on organizations not directly affiliated with the state from distributing food or water to migrants in Calais. The state argued they met the requirements for daily nutrients and that the additional assistance of NGOs was creating a “nuisance” as well as violating COVID-19 restrictions.
This amounts to a constant state of violence. Migrants in Calais are forced to the margins of the region, all to avoid authorities who more often patrol central areas (especially those near border crossings). Beyond restricted movement, migrant populations in the region also see their food and water supply disrupted regularly, even post-COVID. This is a direct violation of their basic human rights, as is the lack of proper shelters available to them. The near-permanent police presence in Calais has altered the comfort of migrant populations, creating the expectation that they are unsafe no matter what. This atmosphere keeps them hidden from the view of French residents, the media, and the police (at least semi-regularly). And when they are no longer seen, neglect becomes the default. French authorities do not see when conditions get worse for migrants on their territory, so they do nothing to solve the crisis. The conditions in Calais “produc[e]stark suffering of refugee bodies and the potential for a ‘slow death.’”
Calais Going Forward
The crisis in Calais is far from over. The vast policy mistakes of French authorities in Calais are the common denominator in the continuing humanitarian crisis. Nearly every day a new story about migrants losing their lives crossing the English Channel pops up online. This ever-present tragedy is not inevitable. Liability lies with not only the French but also with British officials who use the dangerous waterway as a method of deterrence and continue to place anti-migrant political agendas above their government’s human rights commitments. France’s human rights record has been tarnished in Calais as migrants die in the “jungle” or die attempting to cross the Channel. Calais is a clear policy failure, but it does not stop there. Recent immigration reforms pushed through parliament and in the process of becoming official law are also a crucial example of the dark path France is heading toward. For the sake of international human rights norms, these policies and actions must be dissected by human rights observers and French officials. For the migrants whose dream of safety becomes a nightmare in Calais, steps must be taken to expose and scrutinize the actions of French authorities.
Editors
Pau Torres Pagès, Managing Editor
Nicole Monette, Copy Editor
Cameron Roberts (she/her) is a Managing Editor and Columnist for the JPI online magazine. She is an undergraduate junior at NYU in the Global Liberal Studies program, concentrating on Politics, Rights, and Development. Her academic and research interests lie in issues related to migration policy in the Mediterranean region and conflict within the Middle East and North Africa. Outside of JPI, she volunteers with Commonpoint Queens and Serve the City. In her free time, Cameron enjoys spin classes and spending time with friends.
