# Calais - story of the jungle

 Calais jungle known as the "camp de la land" located in vicinity of Calais  France was a refugee and immigrant encampment existed from 2015 - 2016. For years, makeshift settlements known as “jungles” had appeared and vanished in the shadows of Calais. But in 2015—at the height of the European migrant crisis—one shanty town swelled into a sprawling, chaotic city of hope and despair. Its population surged overnight, drawing the unblinking gaze of the world’s media. Here, under the ragged roofs of tarpaulin and scrap wood, migrants clung to the edge of Europe—some daring to dream of slipping across the Channel to the United Kingdom, others trapped in the slow, uncertain wait for their French asylum claims to be heard.

On the windswept edge of Calais, where once only a landfill lay forgotten, a new city was born—not of concrete and steel, but of tarpaulin, timber, and human will. By July 2015, three thousand souls had gathered here, their numbers swelling with each passing week. By the eve of its destruction in October 2016, a census by Help Refugees counted 8,143 men, women, and children—each carrying a story of flight, loss, and fragile hope. The “Jungle,” as it came to be known, was more than a camp; it was a patchwork of survival. Between the mud paths stood shops with hand-painted signs, small restaurants serving food from distant homelands, makeshift schools where children learned amid the noise, places of worship for every faith, and even a boxing club where strength was rebuilt blow by blow. It was a community forged in exile—alive, defiant, and temporary.

At first, the French government turned a blind eye to the Jungle, letting it grow like a scar on the outskirts of Calais. But the winds of tolerance soon shifted. In a calculated move, 1,500 migrants were herded into stacked shipping containers on the site’s north-eastern edge—steel boxes repurposed as shelters. Then, in February 2016, the southern sector was razed under the watch of riot police, arrests scattering through the crowd like sparks.

Yet the Jungle refused to vanish quietly. Activists, artists, intellectuals, and grassroots aid groups poured in, carrying banners, supplies, and solidarity. But by October 2016, the final blow came: bulldozers roared, smoke curled into the sky, and the Jungle was reduced to rubble. The government announced that 6,400 people would be dispersed to 280 temporary reception centres scattered across France.

Amid the chaos, the most haunting question lingered—the fate of 200 unaccompanied children. In 2017, Human Rights Watch revealed that up to 1,000 migrants still wandered the Calais region, adrift without shelter. The Jungle itself was gone, but the people—their struggles, their hopes, their presence—remained, shadows on the edge of Europe.

In 2015, a doctor from Médecins Sans Frontières stepped out of the Jungle after ten days of service and spoke with disbelief—what she had seen here, she said, was worse than anything she had witnessed in the slums of Africa. Water was rationed to thirty taps for thousands, showers were a luxury few could reach, and twenty toilets served a swelling population of three thousand. In July that year, Médecins du Monde issued a grim report: insufficient drinking water, practically no toilets, not enough food, inadequate healthcare.

Illness spread like a shadow through the camp. Médecins du Monde estimated that nearly 40% of those they treated were afflicted with scabies—a contagious skin disease that thrives where bodies are pressed too close, where hygiene is impossible, where hope itself seems infected.

The Jungle had roads that could be traced on a map, and a thin spine of lighting along its centre. But beyond that faint glow lay darkness. Most of the camp was unlit, and when night fell, it became a place of whispered fears and hurried footsteps—where every shadow might hold danger, and the cold wind carried more than just the scent of the sea.

In 2015, a doctor from Médecins Sans Frontières emerged from the Jungle after ten harrowing days. Her voice trembled as she spoke—what she had witnessed here, she said, was worse than the darkest corners of Africa’s slums. Thirty water taps for thousands. Twenty toilets for three thousand souls. Showers so scarce they became almost mythical. In July, Médecins du Monde delivered its own verdict: insufficient drinking water, virtually no sanitation, meagre food, and healthcare stretched to breaking.

Disease seeped into the camp like damp into rotting wood. Nearly 40% of patients treated by Médecins du Monde bore the angry rash of scabies—a parasitic affliction that spreads in the press of unwashed bodies, where filth is unavoidable and dignity a fading memory. It was not just skin that was under siege, but spirit.

The Jungle had its own crude geography—roads marked on hand-sketched maps, a slender thread of light cutting through its centre. But beyond that narrow beam was a darkness that swallowed everything. At night, the camp became a realm of hurried steps, low murmurs, and glances over the shoulder. In the shadows, danger was not an idea—it was a presence. And on the salt-heavy wind from the sea came more than the smell of the Channel; it carried the unspoken truth that here, survival was never guaranteed.

In late May 2016, the Jungle erupted. A brawl between 200 and 300 migrants—Afghans and Sudanese—tore through the camp like a storm. Shouts and blows filled the air; knives flashed in the chaos. When it was over, forty lay injured: thirty-three migrants, five aid workers, and two police officers. Three of the wounds were grave—one a stabbing. Sirens pierced the night as two hundred police, seventy firefighters, and eleven ambulances descended. French authorities opened an investigation, but for many inside, the scars would not be recorded on paper.

By then, the Jungle had become a city in its own right. Deutsche Welle estimated 4,000 to 5,000 residents in May, but through the summer, the numbers swelled. By July 2016, Help Refugees counted 7,307 souls—761 of them minors—and the camp was growing by fifty people a day. September brought conflicting figures: the state claimed 6,901, NGOs claimed 9,000, and even the mayor agreed the higher number was closer to truth. Some said the population touched 10,000 before the bulldozers came. In October, Help Refugees’ final tally was 8,143. More than a thousand police officers stood watch as the last eviction began.

Since the demolition of the Calais Jungle in 2016, a new doctrine has ruled the landscape — the policy of “no fixation points.”

Its mission: to ensure no camp, no matter how small, can ever rise again. Day after day, the streets and wastelands bear witness to the same ritual. The CRS riot police and clearance squads sweep in, dismantling tents and scattering belongings. The evictions are relentless. Camps vanish overnight, only to sprout again like stubborn weeds — in another alley, under another bridge, sometimes in the very same place.

Life in these makeshift shelters is a slow grind of hardship: biting cold, unrelenting rain, hunger, and sickness. The elements strip migrants of their strength, and the lack of sanitation chips away at their dignity. The United Nations has condemned what it calls “unacceptable conditions” — but the warnings drift away on the wind. A hostile climate tightens its grip: police crackdowns grow harsher, food and water distribution is sometimes banned outright, and NGOs speak of violence meted out to those who dare to help. In this shadowed corner of Europe, the message is clear — you may pass through, but you may never belong.

Yet the end of the Jungle did not end its story. In July 2017, Human Rights Watch released a damning report on police conduct in Calais. More than sixty migrants—half of them unaccompanied minors—spoke of an unregulated spray of pepper gas that burned their skin, choked their lungs, and spoiled their meagre food and water. Refugees claimed it was no accident—it was a weapon meant to break their will. That same month, the Human Trafficking Foundation declared in its chillingly titled report, Nobody Deserves to Live This Way!, that hostility from the French state and its police was no coincidence. It was a deterrent—a calculated push to stop these people from even attempting asylum in the United Kingdom. For the most vulnerable, especially children alone, the cruelty was more than a barrier. It was a message: you are not welcome, anywhere.

                      Written by Janifer yasmin, a student of migration and diaspora. She has currently pursuing her master's degree programmes in Migration and diaspora from Indira Gandhi National Open University. She is deeply interested in Migration studies and currently looking forward to doing more research work related to migration issues.

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