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As you look down on a patch of ground in a pleasant neighbourhood in Calais, a large number of creamy grey boulders are visible. Squeezed in between these enormous rocks are dozens of frayed tents. Smoke from wood fires floats in the air as groups of men and boys walk around laughing and talking in the morning sunshine, sharing clementines and cigarettes.
The tent dwellers are asylum seekers hoping to travel by dinghy across the Channel to the UK. Most on this site only arrived in Calais in the past week or two and none expect to be staying long. But now they must contend with not just the civic authorities in this seaside town but the might of both the British and French states.
Beyond the boulders, which were placed there deliberately by the French authorities to prevent the asylum seekers from having anywhere to rest their heads, their movements are restricted by concrete blocks, high fences and barbed wire. Much of Calais’s hostile street architecture is the result of an agreement under which the UK has paid the French government hundreds of millions of pounds to deter those who come here from the world’s conflict zones. Most recently, in March 2023 the UK agreed to hand over £500m to France to help fund a detention centre to “stop the boats”.
Everyone on this stretch of coast knows that crossing the Channel by small boat is a life-threatening undertaking. When the Guardian visited last weekend, gale-force winds, driving rain and an arctic chill prevented crossings. Sunday 24 November was the third anniversary of the worst mass drowning in the Channel since small-boat crossings began at scale in 2018; 27 people lost their lives and four remain missing. The deaths happened in the middle of the Channel despite repeated SOS calls to French and UK coastguards by those on board.
Even without any disasters on the level of November 2021, 2024 has been the deadliest year since these crossings began. Sometimes deaths are reported every few days. According to the UN’s migration agency, the International Organisation for Migration, 75 people so far this year have died or gone missing in the Channel, more than triple the 24 in 2023 and almost five times as many as the 16 in 2022.
But the number of crossings remains high. So far this year more than 33,000 people have crossed, more than the 29,437 last year but less than the 45,755 in 2022.
Associations supporting the asylum seekers say that they are becoming more stretched as funding dwindles and the French government tries to prevent them distributing food, drinking water and warm clothing. But enough supplies are getting through to keep people alive, and somehow the asylum seekers stitch together a threadbare existence.
On Sunday the mood among the rocks is buoyant and relaxed. The temperature is about 10C higher it was than the previous day, although the wind is fierce. The dozens living here are mostly Syrians, Kuwaiti Bidoons – stateless people – and Iraqis, although the nationalities of those moving in and out change frequently. The men, mostly young, are friendly. One of them hugs a 17-year-old Kuwaiti Bidoon boy with a black eye and bruising to his face. The boy laughs and smiles and shrugs off his injuries.
“The police in Serbia did this to me when I was crossing the border,” he says. He doesn’t consider himself to be a victim, preferring instead to focus his energy on getting to the UK. “In Kuwait no passports for Bidoon, no school, no hospital, police beat us. I had to leave,” he says.
A man from Iraq mentions matter-of-factly: “Tomorrow the police will come to evict our site. We get evicted about once every 48 hours.”
A Bidoon man from Kuwait adds: “One year ago I left Kuwait. I survived crossing the desert and I can cope with the living conditions here. But the French police are our biggest problem. They are very hard to deal with. They beat us.”
The mayor of Calais, Natacha Bouchart, accuses the UK of having lax labour laws, which she says attract asylum seekers in northern France. In fact, safety and reuniting with family are the reasons cited by many for choosing the UK as their destination. If anyone does try to work illegally, their wages are usually a fraction of the minimum wage; exploitation is rife and the chances of being caught are high.
“There is no country that will let me sit, just sit,” says one man. “I want freedom and I believe the UK is the country where I can find it.”
Ali, from Lebanon, worked for international fashion chains in his home country before the conflict there forced him to flee. “Governments don’t like refugees,” he says, “but it is these same governments that cause wars that make refugees run away. If these countries want to stop the refugees, they need to stop the wars. The land in my country is amazing, it is beautiful; without war I would never leave it. All we want is to live like normal people – to eat, sleep and work the way they do. We do not want to be rich and we do not want to commit crimes. Nobody makes a choice to be a refugee.”
Lawyers, human rights campaigners and the asylum seekers themselves lay the blame for the increased death toll this year squarely at the door of the French and UK governments. The UK’s Home Office sends out a steady stream of press releases trumpeting its successes in its pledge to stop refugees travelling to the Kent coast – a smuggler or two arrested here, a consignment of dinghies or life jackets seized there – but the numbers that cross when the weather permits suggest the UK government is a long way from putting the smugglers out of business. Meanwhile, the enforcement activity the UK pays the French to carry out has made the crossings even more dangerous. French police intercept dinghies trying to leave beaches along the coast more proactively, firing tear gas and slashing boats.
The horrifying increase in deaths this year does not seem to have altered the fatalism of many asylum seekers. They have already risked and lost almost everything since leaving home. They are not going to crumple at what they see as the final staging post on their arduous journey. And the ability of the smugglers to evolve appears boundless. Because more boats have been seized, smugglers pack the remaining dinghies ever fuller; as police patrols on beaches increase, smugglers use beaches further along the coast in places such as Le Havre, making the crossings longer and more dangerous.
If a new conflict springs up somewhere in the world, it is likely that refugees fleeing that conflict will arrive in Calais six to 12 months later. Few asylum seekers waiting to cross engage with the day-to-day ebb and flow of political pronouncements in the UK about stopping the boats or smashing the smugglers. In fact the dreams of finding sanctuary in the UK date back decades, to before the advent of the hostile environment. Many know that claiming asylum here is no picnic, but somehow they cling on to a belief that the UK is the apex of civilisation, common decency and human rights.
On Saturday afternoon, the UK charity Care4Calais is doing an outdoor drop-in, distributing clothes, hot drinks and snacks, and providing haircuts, music and board games. The charity’s volunteers and the asylum seekers are used to terrible weather and hardly seem to notice it. Many who live close to this area are Sudanese. The majority are young; many appear to be children.
Their clothes do not protect them against the elements. Many have shoes with holes, one or two are wearing socks and flip-flops, and gloves are a precious commodity. The lucky ones have a matching pair; others have just one glove or none.
Yet despite the harsh weather the young Sudanese are stoical as they look up at the sky and wipe the rain off their faces. “In seven months I will meet you at Big Ben,” says one asylum seeker, smiling.
Others speak of suffering looting, beatings, and racism on their journey, and of absent friends who lost their lives crossing the desert or in the Mediterranean. “The suffering facing migrants on our journeys is much greater than what is broadcast and photographed in the media. What people see reported is approximately 10% of our suffering,” says one.
Imogen Hardman, head of field operations in France for Care4Calais, says that the desperation of the asylum seekers here is increasing as conditions worsen and the death toll rises.
“There are fewer and fewer places for asylum seekers to live in northern France. Conditions here are the worst I’ve seen in the years I’ve worked here. The increase in deaths is a direct result of the increase in militarisation of the border. Increasing numbers are missing, unaccounted for and unnamed.”
Célestin Pichaud of the French association Utopia 56, which supports migrants in northern France, says: “The French and the UK have invested a lot of money in repression. More drones, more cameras, more violence. So when people cross, the conditions are more dangerous and more people die.”
Successive governments do not appear to factor in the desperation and determination of the asylum seekers in northern France. “Whoever has a goal, nothing can stop him, no matter how dangerous it is,” says Ali. “The people here all have the same choice – we can live or we can die. Maybe next week, maybe later than that, but we are going to the UK.”
One of the Sudanese teenagers trying to warm his gloveless hands says: “Getting to the UK is my dream, but I may wait until next March because I think the weather will be better then. I like speaking English. Do you know the song Always Look on the Bright Side of Life?”
