Context

What's the situation on the northern border in 2024?

You've probably already heard of the famous "Grande Jungle" in Calais. This shantytown, once the largest in Europ, was destroyed by the authorities in 2016, and its occupants dispersed.

This event is far from having put an end to the presence of exiles on the northern coast, where tens of thousands of them pass through every year. Since then, France has launched a national policy to try and prevent the re-establishment of such a place. The exiles stranded near the Channel coast, awaiting eventual passage to the United Kingdom, find themselves constantly hunted down, harassed and made invisible. Expelled far from the eyes of the world.

During the weeks, months and sometimes years they spend waiting in Calais, they have no choice but to set up the tents and tarpaulins they use as shelter in woods, under bridges, on wasteland and in other isolated places from which they are evicted by the police every 48 hours. A humanitarian crisis is unfolding on French soil, hidden from view.

This constant harassment, combined with the state's deliberate lack of access to water, food, healthcare, hygiene and other basic needs, means that they are kept in inhuman living conditions.

It is our mission as associations to help alleviate the hardship they face at this time in their lives.


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A range of resources to help you understand the situation on the Franco-British border.

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Association l’Auberge des Migrants, 
BP 70113, 62100 CALAIS Cedex

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