View of "the Jungle" camp near Calais after it was torched on 28 October 2016. Thousands of migrants dispersed this week from the now-torched camp they had called home in Calais. Thibault Camus/Press Assocation. All rights reserved.
Before the ‘Jungle’ camp in Calais is erased entirely, both from the patch of earth on which it stands and from the perennially amnesic popular consciousness, it is worth reflecting on the what the camp represents and the issues it raises in the wider context of the migration debate and policy.
Calais, as a port town, has historically been a place of migration. More specifically it has been a transit point, a place through which people pass to reach the UK or somewhere else in France or Europe. It became a major hub for people wishing to claim asylum in Britain in the 1990s, and towards the end of that decade the French Red Cross opened a refugee camp in Sangatte. Converted out of a warehouse on the eastern edges of the town, Sangatte was purposed to house the thousands of refugees sleeping rough in and around Calais.
