Naomi Grant 11125292
Word Count: 25313
Spaces between Sovereignties: A Study of Contemporary Refugee
Camps on the UK – French Border
Naomi Grant 11125292 Master’s Thesis
Sociology: Migration and Ethnic Studies
Supervisors: Yannis Tzaninis & Apostolos Andrikopoulos June 2016
Summary
In a world of territorially bounded states, the modern notion of sovereignty is closely linked to the prerogative of the sovereign to control the movement of persons across their borders. The phenomenon of international migration challenges the ability of states to decide who from the ‘outside’ belongs on the ‘inside’ of their national territory. Therefore, the way states manage migratory movements is an ideal angle from which to examine the way sovereignty operates in the international system. Existing literature has revealed much about the ‘refugee camp’ and its relationship to sovereignty, but much of this work deals with sovereignty in a theoretically abstract sense. The settlement of undocumented persons around Calais and Dunkirk on the UK-French border over the past two decades has led to the creation of de facto refugee camps which sit between two of the world’s richest, most industrialised liberal democracies. Those living in the camps come from war-torn and poverty-stricken countries from around the globe, but all have a common aim; to reach Great Britain and settle there. The camp’s residents are for the most part without legal status, and exist in a limbo between the overlapping sovereignties of the UK and France. The UK has been extensively involved in policy towards these refugee camps, despite the fact that they lie in the territory of another state. This paper seeks to examine what the Calais-Dunkirk refugee camps reveal about the articulation of UK sovereignty in the realm of immigration control, and thus aims to contribute to the empirical study of the way national sovereignty operates. It first uses an historical analysis to track the development of the Calais-Dunkirk refugee camps over the past two decades, and places the UK’s relationship to them in the international legal context. It then explores the articulation of UK sovereignty in relation to the camps through an analysis of UK parliamentary debates. The historical, legal and political analysis used reveals the securitised nature of the UK’s response to the camps, and raises questions about how the ‘illegality’ of persons under international law relates to the articulation of state sovereignty.
Contents
Introduction 4
Formulation of research question 7
Definition of Key Concepts 9
Chapter 1: Theoretical Background 13
Chapter 2: Methodology 17
Chapter 3: Historical Analysis 22
Chapter 4: Constraining Sovereignty? The UK and International Law 29 Chapter 5: Analysis: The Articulation of Sovereignty in UK Parliamentary Debates 32
- Sangatte and Symbolism: Symptom or Cause? 32
- The Calais-Dunkirk Camps and the Media: Framing a Crisis? 34 - UK-French Relations: A Space between Two Sovereignties? 36 - The EU and the Common European Asylum System: Constraining Sovereignty? 40
- Calais and Dunkirk: a Humanitarian Issue? 45
- Illegality and Deservingness: the Power of Labelling 49
- Borders: Technology and Security 56
- Discussion 58
Conclusion 60
Introduction
The settlement of undocumented persons in the ports of Calais and Dunkirk in France has attracted much public attention in the past two years. There have been numerous media reports focused on attempts by persons to cross the English Channel from France into the UK, often by stowing away in commercial lorries or even by attempting to walk through the Channel Tunnel (BBC, 2015). Numbers peaked in July 2015, with reports of up to two thousand attempts a night by people trying to get into the ferry terminal to attempt to cross (ibid). Although the number of residents in the camps has fallen in recent months, there are still an estimated three thousand in Calais and above one thousand in Dunkirk (Samuel, 2016). The camps are but one manifestation of the increasing
numbers of people entering the European Union (EU) seeking international protection from areas of repression and civil war such as Syria, Afghanistan, Eritrea and North Africa (BBC, 2015). This
phenomenon, coupled with enhanced security measures to ensure these people do not reach the UK, has contributed to a situation whereby semi-permanent camps have once again appeared at the UK-French border, home to what is now thousands of displaced persons.
These persons have two things in common: they all want to make it to the UK, and they did not arrive in France intending to stay there. Explanations for this vary wildly depending on the source of information. UK media reports frequently accuse the ‘migrants’ of wanting to exploit the UK benefit system and complain that the UK is seen as a ‘soft touch’ on asylum (BBC, 2015). This long standing narrative has characterised much of the media debate on the Calais-Dunkirk camps and contributed to a sense of grievance in the press that the UK is being ‘invaded’ by undeserving economic
migrants. Conversely, testaments from residents and research reports suggest that the reality is altogether more complex; the UK is not only desirable because it is seen as a place of refuge where human rights are respected and work can be found, but also because of migrant’s family ties and their knowledge of the English language (Laacher, 2002).
The area around Calais has long been a transitory point for those wishing to cross into the UK from France. The Sangatte refugee camp opened near the village of Sangatte in 1999 in response to calls from various charities to help the growing numbers of would-be asylum seekers who were sleeping rough there (Carrère, 2002), and the Red Cross was given responsibility for running it. At the time the camp opened the Kosovo crisis had reached its peak, and what was supposed to be a six hundred capacity centre frequently ended up hosting up to one thousand five hundred people (Guardian, 2002). The camp became a ‘huge source of tension’ between the UK and France (ibid), its existence becoming conflated with the fact that more and more people were attempting to cross the Channel as they fled places of civil conflict. Security agreements between the two states were stepped up
and a political discourse which presented those living in the camps as ‘economic migrants’ who posed a threat to the stability of the UK contributed to the closing of the camp in late 2002 (ibid). However, the mere official dismantling of the refugee camp did not affect the wider geo-political structure which moved to concentrate people on the border with the UK, and it has been a place of transitory settlement ever since.
There has been significant coverage of the recent attempted crossings from the ports into England, but also of the living conditions of the camps, which have been decried as a humanitarian crisis. The UNHCR has expressed concern about the ‘dire circumstances’ residents live in, and has voiced particular concern over the ‘hundreds of children’ in need of shelter and protection (UNHCR, 2016). Medical organisations have reported cases of ‘tuberculosis, gangrene and widespread scabies’ (Davies, Isakjee, 2015: 93). Volunteers have spoken of ‘tracks of stinking mud full of litter and human detritus’, with residents having to defecate near to where they eat due to lack of toilet facilities (Kraft, 2015). Much of the media coverage suggests the UK and France have both been reluctant to take responsibility for the situation; the camp residents are on French territory but they wish to come to the UK, and each national authority has shown signs of wanting to pass the buck to the other. Without a clear jurisdiction as to who is responsible, the camps have come to occupy a unique physical and legal space of irregularity. Until very recently, France had not officially recognised the any of the settlements, meaning that none of the usual international bodies such as the Red Cross or the UN have stepped in to oversee their day to day running. In the past few months the camp in Dunkirk has undergone a transition to be run first by the charity Medicins du Monde, making it an internationally recognised refugee camp.
While the camps and the people living in them have been the subject of much scrutiny, much current academic research focuses on the residents themselves, the conditions they live in and the physical and mental health problems they face. Much of the media reporting centres on the notion of the camps as spaces of crisis and exception. However, an analysis that interrogates the framing of humanitarian crisis is needed in order to understand how the camps have come to exist, why they are unique, and what role the liminal space created by overlapping sovereignties has come to play. Furthermore, an understanding of the forces affecting how sovereignty is articulated is crucial. Policy affecting the Calais-Dunkirk refugee camps is not formulated in a vacuum, and in the area of
migration there is particular tension between a state’s sovereign authority to decide who is allowed in and out of their territory, and under what circumstances, and the legal obligations on an
international level which states are bound to. In the context of the UK and France this includes not only international treaties such as the 1951 Geneva Convention on Human Rights, but also European Union law, specifically the Common European Asylum System. These international instruments
affect the way in which states exercise their sovereign power, particularly regarding the way migrants are labelled and categorised in order to determine who must be allowed in and who must be excluded.
Formulation of Research Question
How officially ‘unrecognised’ refugee camps came to exist on the border of two affluent, highly developed liberal democracies with long standing human rights regimes is in itself a phenomenon worthy of study. The camps around Calais are part of a wider phenomenon in Europe which has seen unofficial refugee camps spring up in various EU member states, including Greece and on the island of Lampedusa in Italy (Davies, Isakjee, 2015: 93). However, the Calais-Dunkirk refugee camps are unique in several respects. France is the wealthiest of all the states in which these European camps have appeared, has a long immigration history tied to its colonial past, and prides itself on being the birth place of human rights (Schuster, 2002). Furthermore, the camps occupy an indistinct physical and jurisdictional space whereby two sovereign states (France and the UK) are involved in the regulation and control of the persons living there, without a clear delineation of sovereign responsibility. Responsibility in this context can be interpreted to mean the duty towards those persons living on French territory according to both national and international law with regard to their human rights. Under the international tradition of territorial sovereignty, it should be France’s sole responsibility to deal with the refugee camps. They are bound by international law to respect the basic human rights of those living in the camps, and to process asylum claims that are lodged. However, many of the residents have not claimed asylum, as many of those who would prefer to get to the UK before they do so. This leads on to a further particularity of the case study; many of the residents of the Calais-Dunkirk camps are not refugees, not in the legal sense. Some are indeed potential asylum seekers but without claiming asylum they remain in a grey area in which they are variously ‘illegals’ ‘economic migrants’ and ‘victims’. The labelling and treatment of these persons, particularly in the legal sense, is largely determined by sovereign states. Thus, the unique case of a refugee camp full of persons notlegally defined as refugees is highly useful in interrogating the purpose of state policy towards migrants and what the use of legal categories can reveal about the rationale behind the articulation of sovereignty. The case also demands closer interrogation of existing theories on refugee camps and sovereignty, and the significance of the figure of the ‘refugee’ for the sovereign. Much has been written on the connection between sovereignty and migration control, and yet there are few empirical studies into the way that sovereignty is articulated by states and exercised. In his study of the way states have developed immigration controls, Torpey observes that ‘much sociological writing about states is insupportably abstract’ (2000: 3). My research aims to analyse sovereignty in an empirical way which will go beyond abstract notions of the concept and provide an insight into the way it operates through state practice. In order to understand how the involvement of the UK has blurred the line of responsibility with regard to the camps, I trace their historical developments starting with the creation and abolition of
the official Sangatte refugee camp which lay in Calais between 1999 and 2002. It would be easy to believe from the media that the settlement of undocumented persons by the UK-French border is a recent phenomenon, but it has been ongoing since before the opening of Sangatte and I therefore believe an analysis of Sangatte may be key in understanding the current situation. I also provide a brief outline of the obligations under international migration law which relate to the UK, with a particular focus on instruments of EU immigration law which could potentially affect the UK’s policy towards the Calais-Dunkirk refugee camps. This research was carried out before the UK referendum on its membership of the EU on 23 June 2016. The vote to leave the Union which resulted from the referendum will mean that the UK’s relationship with the EU is likely to change drastically, and it is not clear which if any of the obligations the UK currently has under EU will continue, or the potential effect this may have on events at the UK-French border. However, for the time being all the
information regarding the UK and the EU provided in my research is still valid as the laws regarding the UK’s membership have yet to be changed.
Informed by this initial analysis, I then explore the significance of the Calais-Dunkirk refugee camps for the UK, specifically with respect to UK sovereignty. I selected the UK as a specific focus rather than France because it is in large measure the UK’s involvement in the border situation that makes the existence of the camps so unique; they are outside the UK’s jurisdiction and yet they have been a significant focal point for the exertion of UK state power in recent years. Furthermore, examining the UK’s actions regarding refugee camps which are de facto outside of UK territory has the potential to reveal much about the changing nature of territorial sovereignty, the significance of borders, and how to move beyond existing conceptions of what refugee camps reveal about the sovereign state.
My research question is: What does the settlement of undocumented persons on the UK-French border reveal about the articulation of UK sovereignty in the realm of immigration control? In order to answer my initial research question I devised two sub-questions which focused my analysis on two specific areas:
Sub-questions:
1. How has the history of the Calais-Dunkirk refugee camps evolved over time, and what are the key moments in the UK’s political response?
2. What do political debates in the UK with respect to the Calais-Dunkirk refugee camps reveal about the articulation of UK sovereignty?
Definition of Key Concepts
Before further discussion some conceptual definitions are necessary. For the purposes of this paper I will refer to those living in the camps as ‘residents’. Defining them as such can be seen as
problematic, because the term ‘refugee camp’ usually implies that its inhabitants are refugees. However, the great majority of residents in the camps have either not applied for this status or are in the process of application, and the both camps have not been officially recognised as refugee camps by the French state, meaning they have no clear legal status. I wish to avoid making a normative assessment about the migration status of the inhabitants of the camps, and I consider ‘residents’ to be as neutral a term as possible. I find terms such as ‘migrant’, ‘asylum seeker’ and ‘refugee’ lacking, not only because of the risk of analytical confusion but also because of the pejorative nature the use of these labels has taken on in the UK media. Referring to them as ‘irregular’ or ‘undocumented’ carries connotations that have come through arbitrary distinctions in media coverage of illegal migration. The political labelling of these persons as migrants not seeking international protection has the effect of absolving state authorities from their duties of
international protection (Carrère, 2002: 21). Furthermore, they are stuck in a situation of displacement where they are unable to actually migrate. However, when speaking about the migrating population outside the context of the camps I will use the word ‘migrant’ for analytical simplicity.
When referring to the camps at the UK-French border, I will call them ‘refugee camps.’ I choose the word ‘refugee camp’ for purposes of continuity when referring to the Sangatte refugee camp, and because nowadays the settlements are made up of both an official refugee camp in Dunkirk, and unofficial settlements around the Calais area, comprised mainly of persons either coming from war-torn or poverty-stricken countries, who aim to seek international protection. To make a distinction between the refugee camps of my case study and those in the literature, I use the term ‘Calais-Dunkirk refugee camps’, here after shortened to ‘C-D refugee camps.’
The Oxford dictionary gives a basic definition of sovereignty as the supreme authority of a self-governing entity. For the purposes of my research I will be focusing primarily on national sovereignty. My conception of national sovereignty as more than ‘the authority of the state to govern itself’ will be informed by Agamben’s notion of sovereign power as that which decides the state of exception (Agamben, 1998), and also Cornelisse’s description of the sovereign as that who ‘exercises exclusive and ultimate power over people because of their presence in a certain territory’ (2010: 4). The role of territoriality in national sovereignty will be an important consideration in my case study because of the complexity of two sovereign powers being involved in the jurisdiction over
refugee camps located on the territory of one state. I am taking a relatively open interpretation of sovereignty, because I hope to further illuminate the concept through examining the channels through which it is articulated by the state. Attempts by the state to articulate its sovereign
authority can be shown through processes of national and international law, political discourse, and through the exertion of coercive force. Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair conceived of
sovereignty as ‘the capacity of a nation to promote its security and prosperity’ (Geddes, 2005: 724), a conception which is useful to keep in mind when looking at how the UK responds to immigration. Sovereignty exists when it is articulated and enacted, and it is through the assertion of sovereignty that its power is felt (Benhabib, 2007).
A brief discussion on how the concept of modern sovereignty has developed is useful in
contextualising the way in which the term is used in this paper and the way it relates to territory and migrationcontrol. In his study of the development of the passport as a tool of immigration control, Torpey describes how the state has gradually monopolised the legitimate means of movement (2000), which plays on Max Weber’s definition of the state as having the monopoly on the legitimate use of force. The word ‘legitimate’ is key here, because it represents the power invested by the people in the state to protect its territory and its population. The notion of a ‘contract’ between state and people was articulated by enlightenment philosophers such as Rousseau, Locke and Hobbes, and reflects the idea that the state, or the sovereign, must be legitimated through its duty to represent the will of the people. This process ‘took hundreds of years to come to fruition (ibid: 8), accelerating when the French Revolution helped consolidate the notion of the ‘nation state’ (2). The process has entailed the gradual development of the kind of government institutions needed to support the ‘contract’ between state and people and the concomitant idea of a nation of citizens; a development which has vastly increased the protections accorded to the individual by the state, but in turn has extended the reach of the state into citizens lives (ibid).
The linking of sovereignty and territoriality was solidified even earlier, with the treaty of Westphalia in 1648 which ended the thirty years war in Europe, and represented a new political order in which political authority was founded upon demarcated territory (Cornelisse, 2010: 33). The nexus between sovereign, people and territory is represented through the ‘exclusive and ultimate power’ the sovereign has over people ‘because of their presence in a certain territory’ (ibid: 27). According to Cornelisse, territory is a key ‘organising device’ in the international system which determines who gets access to rights supposedly protected by the sovereign in a given state. This is where Torpey’s idea of the ‘monopoly of the means of movement’ is important. In order to regulate who gets access to the rights enjoyed by their citizens, states have tried increasingly to regulate access to their
territory by means of immigration control. The perceived need to regulate has perpetuated the idea of mass migration as a threat to sovereign and people. As Cornelisse’s observes:
‘The contemporary portrayal of immigration as a phenomenon which upsets the existing order is the result of the perceived naturalness in the way in which the modern notion of sovereignty has linked people, territory and authority and its particular construct of an inside and an outside’ (ibid: 135). It is the particular position of the migrant as potential threat to the nation-state which makes state immigration control practices such a fruitful focus in the study of how sovereignty is exercised. Furthermore, studying state practices at the border has the potential to further uncover and interrogate how the territorial element of sovereignty functions in determining the inside and the outside of the state.
The modern notion of sovereignty has also been crucial in determining the obligations of states with regards to international immigration law. Sovereignty in its essence stands for ‘freedom from external influence’ (Juss, 2004: 296), and yet in a world of interdependent states, a separate body of law exists which places constraints upon this freedom. In the area of immigration law the greatest constraint by far is that of international refugee law, which obliges signatory states to grant asylum to those who qualify under the terms of the 1951 Geneva Convention. The Convention has been ratified by 144 states (UNHCR.org), and the requisite qualifications have gradually been extended over time to cover situations of state disintegration through armed conflict, such as the one
currently taking place in Syria. States are also able to grant protection for humanitarian purposes not directly covered by the convention. However, as Juss points out, the ‘right to asylum has yet to evolve fully in international law’ (ibid: 295). The right to leave ones country to claim asylum has not been accompanied by a right to enter into another states territory in order to claim it, which represents a fundamental flaw in the way the international refugee protection system functions. A state’s sovereign right to determine who is allowed into its territory has remained to a great extent unchallenged by the development of international law, and thus there is limited scope for any international legal framework to challenge ‘the legitimacy of current immigration controls’ (ibid:293). The sanctity of the nation-state has been used to refute arguments for more open borders and the development of an international right of free movement (Verlinden, 2010), a right which for hundreds of years was unnecessary because the right of the state to refuse entry to an individual was itself undeveloped (Juss: 2004: 299).
The relative sophistication of the international refugee regime and the obligations it places upon states has engendered a need for governments to distinguish between ‘refugees’ and other types of migrant. A network of bi-lateral, international and regional (such as the EU) instruments have been
developed to deal with the regulation, rights and movement of workers between states, along with states’ individual visa regimes. However, those who are not accepted as either workers or persons deserving of international protection fall into the murky category of ‘irregular migrant’, upon which international law is largely silent. According to Castro, refugees and irregular, or ‘illegal’ migrants, are both categories of legal subject created by international law (Castro, 2013: 67). However, international law is only instrumental in creating illegal migrants through an absence of definition, since it is primarily up to states to decide whether a migrant is ‘illegal’ or not through their own systems of immigration law and policy. The way states label migrants is revealing in understanding how their sovereignty is articulated, because it is indicative of the way they conceive their
responsibilities under international law in relation to their sovereign right of self-determination. Therefore, in researching the connection between national sovereignty and immigration control it is necessary to take into account the international legal context and the repercussions it has on the way states formulate their policies. As will be discussed in the analysis section, the way the UK perceives the status of the residents of the C-D refugee camps has been instrumental in the way it has justified and carried out its policy surrounding the camps. Different ways of viewing the
residents, whether humanitarian or securitised, is of great influence in the way policy is formulated in response to the situation.
Theoretical Background
Much of the literature regarding refugee camps and sovereignty springs from Agamben’s theory of sovereignty, which he articulated in ‘Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life’ (1998). According to Agamben, it is in the supposedly anomalous status of state run refugee camps that the ‘state of exception’, whereby the law is suspended by the sovereign, is able to take hold, and the camps are allowed to exist in limbo. According to Agamben, modern sovereignty divides people up into ‘bare’ and ‘qualified’ life, or rather simple, physical life and politically recognised life (Robinson, 2011). This distinction is useful when thinking about the nexus between citizenship and sovereignty, and the effect of this on those who are left outside of this order, such as undocumented persons.
Furthermore, Agamben suggests that the nature of the modern state revolves around its power to exclude and therefore reduce someone to ‘bare life’, which is linked to its ability to declare a ‘state of exception’ whereby law loses its value. The homo sacer is a ‘space and body included in the political order by being excluded’ (Ramadan, 2012: 67). According to Agamben, the conditions of exception which exist in a refugee camp are in fact indicative of the embedded functioning of sovereign power because the ability to decide the state of exception is the fundamental constitutive element of the modern sovereign state. This notion is particularly useful when considering how the supposedly ‘anomalous’ apparition of unauthorised refugee camps filled with destitute persons in a highly developed liberal democratic state may not in fact be so perverse. The C-D refugee camps are constructed as ‘exceptional’, by politicians and media alike and represent a permanent state of crisis. Starting with Agamben’s conceptualisation of sovereignty is useful for thinking about how the exceptional is constructed on a continuum with the everyday.
In ‘International Refugees and Irregular Migrants: Caught in the Mundane Shadow of Crisis’ Juan M. Amaya-Castro touches on the related distinction between the ‘mundane’ and the ‘crisis’ which characterises how migration is treated in international law. He argues that international legal scholarship has not focused enough on the functioning of refugee camps due to their supposedly ‘transient’ and ‘temporary’ nature (2013: 74). There is a lack of acknowledgement that a crisis situation often drifts into a more permanent state, crossing the boundary into the ‘mundane’ which remains unacknowledged by the legal system. This tendency is also reflected in the legal distinction between ‘refugee’ and ‘illegal migrant’ (67). International law does not ‘see’ irregular migrants (77), and instead supports an international order which conceives of irregular migration as an issue of organised crime. The distinction between the two categories is often blurred in the political realm, and the political use of different categories in crisis situations can have very different impacts on the way in which sovereign power is wielded to deal with them. Castro reveals a problematic link
between sovereignty and international law which reflects Agamben’s theory. International law supports a system of sovereignty whereby only certain forms of migratory phenomena are ‘seen’, such as refugee crises and others, such as the ‘mundane’ everyday control of irregular migration, is left to the ‘black box’ of state sovereignty.
In his paper ‘Free movement and the world order’ (2004), Juss also reflects on the distinctions made between different categories of migrant in international law and the way these are subsequently blurred in political discourse. He notes how the concept of free movement as a fundamental right ‘has remained underdeveloped because of their perceived need by communities to protect themselves from the ‘other’’ (294). Political discourse often uses legal categories interchangeably when referring to migrants, which dulls the analytical distinction between them and pools them into the category of ‘other’ which can be construed more easily as a threat to the state. The fact that there remains no ‘free standing right to enter into any other state’ means that even the very few instruments relating to rights regardless of legality are silent on the question of cross-border movement (295). The insights of Juss and Castro are particularly useful when considering the rationale behind the way residents of the UK-French border camps are labelled and the way this connects to international law and state authority.
In ‘Immigration Detention and the Territoriality of Universal Rights’ (2010), Cornelisse shows how international human rights law is supposed to constrain state power but has not been able to live up to its aims (247). She attributes this to the modern conception of state sovereignty as being
inextricably tied to territory, and the way this has made access to rights dependent on citizenship in a particular national territory. The ‘global system’ based on territory and the social system of the nation state’ has entailed the ‘immunisation of territorial sovereignty against conventional forces of legal correction’ (3). This conception of sovereignty again echoes Agamben’s notion of the state of exception whereby the particularity of the state is defined by its ability to extricate itself from constraints of the law in the name of protecting its sovereign integrity. As Cornelisse points out, migration control has become a primary tool for protecting the territorial ideal of the state from the perceived threats of outsiders, namely migrants, who are routinely excluded from rights regimes designed to protect the citizen and not merely the individual. By linking sovereignty and
international law to state control of migration Cornelisse provides a useful framework for considering how these elements combine in the C-D refugee camps.
Certain scholars have provided key theoretical insights beyond those of Agamben which contest the notion that refugee camps are filled with silent, disempowered figure of homo sacer. In ‘Spatializing the Refugee Camp’ (2012), Ramadan argues that although many studies are now ‘automatically
linked’ to Agamben, refugee camps have much more complex sovereignties than is implied by his conceptualisation of camps which are exclusively controlled by state authority (68). For Ramadan, refugee camps are also spaces of hospitality which aim to ‘sustain bio political life, not extinguish it’ (61). He identifies ‘multiple partially sovereign actors’ (69) which make up the ‘camp society’. Important in Ramadan’s argument is the fact that refugee camps in the commonly understood sense of the term are set up for humanitarian reasons and run by international organisations such as the UN or, in the case of the former Sangatte camp, the Red Cross. In these cases, sovereign power is shared or delegated and the international organisation enacts its own sovereignty on the refugees living in the camps. However, in the case of the C-D refugee camps the distinction is far from clear. They are not all recognised by the French government therefore there is no overarching organisation in charge of running them. The C-D refugee camps have sprung up ad-hoc, against the will of the authorities, and thus they are not necessarily a space intended to ‘preserve’ life or protect people fleeing persecution. They have become de facto refugee camps without many of the typical features of such constructs identified by existing literature.
The limited academic literature relating specifically to the C-D refugee camps identifies the link between an ‘inert’ political will on a national and European level, and the appearance of ‘de facto’ refugee camps in spaces of transience and territorial ambiguity across Europe (Davies, Isakjee, 2015: 93). Also recognised is the way that state power is ‘spatialised’ within the C-D refugee camps
through the construction of militarised ‘defences’, such as barbed wire fences and demolitions. This notion of physical manifestations of state power is useful when considering how the articulation of sovereignty may be analysed and observed. Different visual aspects of state intervention such as security controls or humanitarian support centres give alternate indications of state policy towards the C-D refugee camps. Furthermore, such manifestations of state power are potentially blurred by the overlapping jurisdictions of the UK and French governments in controlling the border.
The historical impact of the overlapping responsibilities of the UK and France is identified by Schuster in ‘Sangatte: a false crisis’ (2002). Here she describes how the Sangatte refugee camp became a symbol of UK inertia with regard to immigration control, and subsequently the object of media-fuelled strong-arming on the part of the UK government to persuade France to close it down. She describes how Sangatte became a ‘crisis’ in the UK at the start of election season in 2001 through persistent media coverage which eventually forced the Labour government into reactive policy making. She suggests that ‘closing Sangatte must have seemed like the easiest option’, given the agenda set by the press which carried numerous front pages with warnings of ‘invasion’ and ‘assault’ by C-D refugee camp residents. Similarly, in ‘Sangatte: Un toit pour des phantomes’, Carrère reveals how the perception of the camps as a ‘crisis’ and a problem hides the subtle ways in which
UK and French sovereign interactions shaped events which led to the camp’s closure. Agreements to ‘control’ the flow of refugees into the UK were convoluted by each side’s attempts to undermine the other, stemming from a mutual reluctance to take responsibility for the situation.
Insights from a UNHCR study into European press coverage of the EU refugee and migrant crisis (2015) also help contribute to an understanding of the power the media can have in influencing the way governments react to issues of migration control. The report describes how coverage in the UK relating to the Calais situation tended to frame the issue as one of illegal migration. Thus, it is not surprising that ‘much of the coverage centred on the question of how to strengthen borders to prevent ‘migrants’ reaching Britain’ (ibid: 53). Coverage of an illegal migration ‘crisis’ echoes the rhetoric of far-right parties which has in turn been reflected in the speech of mainstream politicians such as David Cameron, who was quoted as describing ‘swarms of people’ crossing into Europe (ibid: 13). The report argues that media portrayals of migrants are significant because of the ‘cultural authority’ of the press, and its potential to influence and construct the way in which events are understood (ibid).
Literature from the era of Sangatte provides important insight into the way in which the camp gradually appeared in a liminal space between two sovereign powers. What is now needed is a thorough analysis of the process by which this ambiguous space has continued and proliferated since the camp’s closure in 2002. An analysis of how political and legal agreements between the UK and France unfolded in the duration is key in understanding the unique nature of the current C-D refugee camps.
In summary, the existing literature has much to contribute to an analysis of how UK sovereignty is articulated in respect to the C-D refugee camps. I intend to contribute to a more nuanced
understanding of how sovereignty relates to them in the context of existing theory, and also how the camps challenge the conceptualisation of refugee camps which is often used in the literature. I also build upon the literature relating specifically to the C-D refugee camps by elaborating on the nature of sovereign responsibility that has taken hold there and link the Sangatte events to the current situation through an analysis of the historical processes leading to today’s refugee camps.
Methodology
Sub-question 1: How has the history of the Calais-Dunkirk refugee camps evolved over time, and what are the key moments in the UK’s political response?
Sub-question 2: What do political debates in the UK with respect to the Calais-Dunkirk refugee camps reveal about the articulation of UK sovereignty?
I first conducted an historical analysis leading from the birth of the Sangatte refugee camp up until May 2016. This was done in order to get beyond the common perception of the Calais settlements as a ‘crisis’ and to find out to what extent the settlement of undocumented persons there was exceptional, and the way in which their settlement has been perceived historically. Recent public discussion in the UK about the settlements (primarily Calais) has often ignored or been ignorant of the fact that there was previously a state-sanctioned refugee camp there.
To carry out the historical tracing process I chose to use media reports, given that this was the source likely to provide the most consistent information on events surrounding Calais. I also wanted to find out if there was any significant news coverage around bi-lateral agreements made between the UK and France regarding the camps. In order to do this I used Lexis Nexis, specifically using the search words UK/France/Calais/Refugee/Migrant/Agreement. I decided to make a particular selection of media sources in order to narrow my search, and decided on the British newspapers ‘The Daily Mail’ and ‘The Guardian.’ I wanted two newspapers which would potentially show differing reporting strategies relating to Calais due to their typically right and left wing leanings. I selected the Daily Mail because it is the most widely read ‘right wing’ newspaper in the UK, and also the newspaper which has covered the border situation the most extensively. I selected The Guardian because it is the most widely read ‘left wing’ paper in the UK. I first checked to see when the first reference of the UK-French border in relation to migrants or refugees was. The Daily Mail first reported a ‘mass attempt’ by one hundred Romanians attempting to enter the UK in a commercial lorry coming from Calais, in 1998 (Taylor, Williams, 05 December 1998). However, I decided to begin my analysis in 1999, which was when the Red Cross refugee camp first opened in Sangatte and I consider this the first internationally significant moment in the history of migrant settlement at the UK-French border. For both newspapers, I went through all the articles mentioning my search words (Calais, UK, France, agreement, refugee, migrant) and recorded every one which related to my research questions, in chronological order from 1999 to 2016 .
My historical analysis was also informed by NGO reports, mostly from the Sangatte era, and also between 2014 and 2016, the time when the UK-French border has received increasing public
attention. There are a few limitations regarding my chosen sources of data for my historical analysis. Firstly, relying on media reports means using biased information, which is sometimes reported to achieve a particular aim. There is no such thing as an impartial media report, and I was aware that moments in time when there was a proliferation of media reports might not necessarily represent a significant change in the situation at the C-D refugee camps, but an attempt to generate public attention and sway opinion. Therefore, some significant moments in their history may not have been reported. Similarly, relying on NGO and academic reports about state activities relating to the camps might represent a bias which would be balanced out by using government speeches and reports about the situation. Unfortunately, I was unable to find any government reports relating to the camps and limited information in speeches. However, the breadth of the timeframe, the volume of data and the range of sources I did rely on were sufficient to provide a reasonably comprehensive picture of the history of the camps.
In order to provide some contextual background on the UK’s legal obligations and constraints in the area of immigration control, I conducted a brief analysis of the international and EU legal
instruments relating to migration which would be relevant to the UK policy towards the C-D refugee camps. I relied first upon academic research, media reports and subsequently UK parliamentary debates, the latter of which became my primary source of data. I used my analysis of international and EU law to find out which areas of UK sovereignty in the realm of migration were completely or partially affected by these instruments.
After gaining an overall picture of the international legal framework governing state obligations to certain categories of migrant, I used this to inform my analysis of my second sub-question. For this section I carried out qualitative analysis on transcripts of UK parliamentary debates and ministerial statements made in parliament. The aim of this was to focus specifically on what UK policy was in relation to C-D refugee camps, how those arguments were presented, what the problems and solutions used to justify the policies were, and how the opposition reacted in turn. I then used these arguments in the context of relevant existing theory to formulate a notion of how UK sovereignty is articulated in policy relating to the C-D refugee camps.
UK parliamentary debates are formal discussions taking place in either the House of Commons or the House of Lords, concerning a policy issue or government proposal. Ministerial statements are made to parliament by government ministers and usually address major events, government policies and actions. After the statement MPs have the opportunity to pose questions on the relevant topic to the minister. I chose parliamentary debates as my primary data source because I
opposition, allowing the issues debated to be placed in the most revealing political context. Previous studies have used parliamentary debates to analyse how governments express migration policy because they ‘continue to provide a strong institutional locus for researching political positioning among the political elite over time’ (Huysmans, Buonfino, 2008: 766).
Furthermore, I considered that analysing direct speech from the relevant members of government was to an extent the best proxy for the articulation of sovereignty. As sovereign, the government’s official statements regarding the UK-French border can be analysed as expressions of state power. Other studies which use parliamentary debates to analyse immigration issues have focused on what parliamentary discourse around migrants reveals about racism (Van Dijk, 2000, Augostinos, Every, 2007). In this study, I am using parliamentary debates to research what discourse around an immigration issue reveals about sovereignty. Parliamentary debates are ‘the forum where immigration laws and policies are actually discussed, debated and implemented’ (Bauder,
Semmelroggen, 2009: 5). Sovereign power is expressed through discourse, laws and policies, which is why an analysis of political debates is key in understanding the way in which sovereignty functions empirically. In focusing on how sovereignty is expressed, my research focuses largely on the UK government, meaning that the ‘institutional and wider societal renditions’ (ibid: 767) of the situation at the UK border which might demand a more comprehensive analysis of media and other sources was not relevant here.
I chose my time frame based around the most significant bi-lateral agreements made between the UK and France in relation to the C-D refugee camps, because these were moments of change when policy was most likely to have been debated in parliament. The key moments were:
1. December 2002, when the UK and France signed a deal to close Sangatte and move the UK border to Coquelles and Calais.
2. July 2009, when the UK pledged significant financial support to the French to tighten border controls, the result of an Anglo-French summit.
3. August 2015, When the UK and France signed a deal announcing significantly increased security measures to prevent undocumented persons crossing the UK-French border. I aimed to search for debates that took place within a one year time frame either side of each agreement. In order to perform my search, I initially used the online parliamentary search tool Hansard online, which provided me with all debates that had taken place after 2010 using the search term ‘Calais’. However, all debates taking place before 2010 have been archived and to search through them requires knowing the exact date the debate took place. Therefore, finding the relevant debate would demand looking through every debate, every day, taking place within a two
year period around each agreement. I contacted a staff member in the parliamentary library and was able to request a search of all debates taking place from 2001-2009 with the words ‘Calais’, ‘Borders’ and ‘Border Control.’ From my searches and the results I obtained I selected a total of seven debates, taking place in the House of Commons:
1. Border Controls: 03/05/2001 2. Northern France: 02/12/2002 3. Border Security: 05/01/2015 4. Border Management: 24/06/2015 5. Calais: 14/07/2015 6. Refugees in Calais 06/01/2016 7. Child Refugees: Calais 29/02/2016
I was unable to find a relevant debate from the period around 2009, and so have excluded that time period from my analysis of parliamentary debates.
The relative political actors in the debates are MPs from the UK government and MPs from opposition parties. In the debates from 2001 and 2002 there was a Labour government and opposition members came from the Conservative party, the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish National Party (SNP). In the debates from 2015 and 2016 the current Conservative government are represented and the opposition parties include the Labour party, the Liberal Democrats and the SNP. Traditionally the Labour party, as a ‘centre-left party’, has generally projected a more favourable attitude to immigration and migrants in general. Conversely, the Conservative party is seen as representing a more ‘centre-right wing’ section of the electorate which views high levels of
immigration as a threat and takes a more exclusionary attitude to migrants. Research suggests that migration policy can be affected by having either a right or left wing political party in power (Wong, 2015) but there is not significant evidence to justify sweeping generalisations about the effect of right or left wing governments on immigration. The Labour party presided over drastic changes to the UK asylum system in which many more places were built to detain migrants, and children were routinely detained while awaiting detention, neither of which are considered elements of a ‘liberal’ immigration control policy. Nevertheless, the Conservatives have had to contend with a reputation as the ‘nasty party’ (The Guardian, 2015), a smear which is often repeated in the media in response to their increasingly hard-line rhetoric on the subject of migration control, but also wider social policy. Given Home Secretary Theresa May’s Conservative Conference speech in 2015, in which she ‘pledged to clamp down on the rights of asylum seekers’ (ibid) and associated mass migration with
deteriorating social cohesion, one would expect Conservative parliamentary discourse to reflect these tough attitudes.
For my analysis I drew upon discourse analysis methodology and used coding to organise my analysis into themes which related to my research question. My approach to discourse analysis was
specifically influenced by Van Dijk’s paper on ‘the analysis of parliamentary debates on immigration’ (2000). Because my analysis was focused on drawing overall themes from a relatively large collection of texts, I avoided close analysis of ‘semantic structures’ and focused more on how arguments are formulated, articulated and justified. Each of my themes was chosen by selecting quotes and passages from each debate that pertained to UK policy relating to the C-D refugee camps and grouping them according to codes. These themes formulated the basis of my interpretation of how sovereignty is articulated by the UK government.
Historical Analysis
People from poverty-stricken and war-torn countries have been gathering in the coastal area of Northern France for many years, with the hope of being able to cross the Channel between Britain and France in order to reach the UK and settle there. This phenomenon began to receive attention in the UK media in the late 1990s, when the crisis in Kosovo caused an influx of refugees into EU states. An early report from the Daily Mail describes how one hundred Romanians were apprehended by immigration forces on the border packed inside a lorry, en route to the UK (Taylor, 5/12/1998). This unprecedented mass attempt was a clear sign that the former trickle of people trying to enter the UK was growing significantly, and thus the settlements made by those waiting to attempt the crossing began to attract attention. In a report on behalf of French migrant support NGO GISTI, Carrere describes how the people gathering over the years at the border have reflected the world’s conflicts and oppressions (2002: 13). The Sangatte camp which opened to support the growing numbers of people fleeing conflict in 1999 was a ‘point where we observe a phenomenon of world disorder and political decisions at the national and EU level’ (translated). The camp was open from late 1999 to December 2002, when it was closed by the French government after increasing pressure from the UK, which viewed it as a ‘magnet’ for illegal migration. It was initially put in place after a series of protests by local charities, most notably a small charity named ‘La Belle Etoile’, formed in 1994 to help migrants in the area (ibid: 14). Although many of those living in the camp were fleeing situations of persecution and civil conflict, they could not be legally termed ‘refugees’ because over the entire course of the camp’s existence only one percent claimed asylum in France (Liagre, Dumont, 2005: 95). This unique situation was largely caused by the fact that all the residents of the camp in fact wanted to reach the UK, and those that wished to claim asylum were waiting to do so there. A study by the French sociologist Smaiin Laacher (2002) about Sangatte, in which he
interviewed many residents, revealed that the reasons people wished to get to the UK were complex. Family and linguistic ties were both relevant, as was the UK’s relatively favourable asylum system compared to other EU countries. People believed they ‘would be treated better in the UK’ (Liagre, Dumont: 2005: 97), however they had also ended up at the UK-French border after travelling all across the EU and realising they were not welcome in any of the countries through which they passed (ibid).
According to Carrere, the residents’ lack of legal status rendered them ‘ghosts’ (2002: 22), living in a camp whose very existence is defined by the state of limbo they find themselves in. Neither the UK or France wished to take responsibility for processing the residents, and as UK pressure mounted on France to deal with the increasing number of attempted crossings after the opening of the camp,
French officials were giving people information on how to apply for asylum not in France, but in the UK (ibid: 16.)
In her paper on the ‘crisis’ construction of Sangatte (2002) Schuster notes that for the first year after it opened Sangatte received little attention in the UK media; it was only after election season started in 2001 that the portrayal of the camp as a problem to be dealt with truly began. Reports that there had been ‘stabbings’ committed by residents of the camp were linked to the need for a UK-French deal on border security (The Guardian, 13/02/01), and the right wing paper the Daily Mail reported Prime Minister Tony Blair’s failure to engage the French in his ‘war on asylum’ in the run up to the election (Deans, 10/02/01). It complained that previous agreements on border checks had not been implemented, and decried the camp for being a ‘refugee haven’ (Hickley, 13/04/01). Sangatte became a symbol of a lack of immigration management, especially in the right wing press which opposed the incumbent Labour government. The centre was linked to an ‘illegal immigrant crisis’ in which ‘we pretend that we are in control but we have lost all control’ (Sergeant, 04/09/01). Schuster notes how in August and September every front page carried reports on Sangatte, and Home Secretary David Blunkett was ‘attacked’ by the press for not acting sooner. Sangatte was cited as a ‘bone of contention’ between the UK and France (Hickley, 14/09/2001) but in September 2001 the two countries issued a joint statement saying they were ‘committed to combatting the illegal trafficking of human beings and the abuse of asylum procedures’ (ibid). The link between Sangatte, illegality and asylum abuse became a common theme in the press, which only strengthened calls in the UK for its closure. In an absence of agreement, the UK government tried other means to stem the numbers of people attempting crossings, initially trying to impose fines on Eurotunnel for allowing illegal migrants in (The Guardian, 05/02/2002), an attempt which was dropped after a legal challenge from Eurotunnel, which was forced to invest in extra security at the crossing.
After months of talk between the UK and French authorities, an agreement to close the Sangatte centre was finalised on the 2nd of December 2002 (Liagre, Dumont: 2005: 110). In an unprecedented move, the UK government agreed to accept a thousand Iraqi Kurds on specially created work permits and two hundred Afghans on family reunification visas who had been living in Sangatte. In return, France would process up to four hundred residents of other nationalities and would ensure the closure of the centre. The deal was politicised, with the UK government presenting it as a triumph, and government critics protesting that the deal was weak and ‘disgraceful’ (Hickley, 03/12/2002), an attempt by the government to distract from the ‘administrative shambles’ of the UK asylum system. However, some reports framed the deal as a decisive move to take back control, needed because ‘the public dislikes a picture of governments that have lost control’ (The Guardian, 03/12/2002). The main element of the deal which was championed by the government, and represented a significant
shift in UK border control, was that the UK border was effectively to be moved to Calais and Coquelles. This meant that UK border staff would be sent to those ports to carry out immigration checks on all passengers coming into the UK from those points (Travis, 06/07/2002). The deal was welcomed by the UNHCR, but the juxtaposed controls for the UK were criticised as setting ‘a worrying precedent for its obligation to provide sanctuary for refugees’ (Travis, 03/12/2002). The year after Sangatte was closed the number of asylum applications made in the UK fell, and the government was quick to link the two events. A Guardian report pointed out that the year before sixty five percent of applications were made in-country, meaning they were made away from port entrances and therefore could not be associated with Calais (Travis, 23/05/2003). Reports continued in the right wing press about the UK being a ‘soft-touch’ on asylum (Bayley, 10/03/2003), with the Home Office admitting the UK had been perceived as such but due to ‘tough new measures’ this would be no more. This continuing discourse within the UK reveals how the UK-French border situation has long been inextricably linked with fears about the asylum system and the preoccupation that the UK is not tough enough with immigration controls.
In the years subsequent to the closure of Sangatte it is difficult to formulate a clear picture of how events continued with the settlements on the border. What is certain is that there have continued to be settlements in the Calais area right up until the present day, although there are no official figures on the number of people living there at any given time. In an absence of political interaction
between France and the UK on the C-D refugee camps, often intermittent media reports are the only available source for that period to try and determine what was occurring. It is notable that in 2005 as the election season began again, media reports of the UK’s ‘soft touch asylum system’ in relation to Calais resurfaced. Scenes of C-D refugee camp residents attempting to make the crossing
prompted the Daily Mail to claim that the situation ‘gives the lie to the prime ministers claims that his government has immigration under control’ (Allen, Sears, 14/04/2005). Later on in 2007, a new asylum aid centre due to be built by the French government in Calais provoked fears of a ‘Sangatte II’. A Guardian article pointed out that there ‘had always been humanitarian facilities in Calais’ (Travis, 14/04/2007), but the British nevertheless raised ‘concerns’ with the French government about the proposed centre. In the end, the centre was open for a mere five nights before President Sarkozy ordered its closure, claiming the camp had not been approved (The Daily Mail, 28/12/07). Again, a move to introduce more permanent humanitarian assistance was blocked, despite the fact that the settlement of undocumented persons at the border was in no way temporary.
In 2009, the year before the UK election, Calais hit the headlines once again. It appears that around this time the number of people gathering at the C-D refugee camps increased, some reports totalling
the number of people dotted around the coast as up to one thousand five hundred (Burke, 07/03/2009). One camp in particular attracted a significant amount of attention; a settlement comprising initially of about five to eight hundred people nicknamed ‘The Jungle’ by residents (bid). Concerns began to grow about the ‘sophistication’ of the people trafficking networks operating there, and the French authorities carried out a series of raids to clear the camps. However, there were claims about the performative nature of these raids, with NGOs working in the area claiming that police arrested residents only to let them go almost immediately (Chrisafis, 04/07/2009). Reports also claimed that the numbers of residents were once again reaching Sangatte levels, along with increased numbers of attempted crossings. The UK and French governments once again resumed talks on the matter, and in July 2009 a UK-French deal was agreed after a summit between the two countries. The UK ‘pledged £15 million to tighten British border controls’ at the French ports, and France for the first time promised explicitly to step up forced and voluntary repatriations of residents of the Jungle and other, smaller camps. The money was reportedly aimed at paying for new technology to search vehicles, and other security improvements (Allen, Walker, 07/07/2009). The government announced having ‘one of the strongest borders in the world’, but the Conservative shadow immigration minister criticised the Labour party’s deal, saying;
‘We are apparently paying…so that the French enforce their own laws. Every few months the government makes a tough announcement about the border at Calais. Sadly this has never been followed up by tough action. The long term solution is the introduction of a proper border police.’ (ibid).
The rival interpretations of the political parties shows how politicised the border issue was becoming in the UK. Repeatedly the growth of the C-D refugee camps have been linked to a lack of control by the UK government on its asylum or immigration system, and subsequent action has been taken by the government to reinforce the border and step up controls. Over the course of the past twenty years the border has changed immensely in reaction to the settlements beside it, to the point where the UK now has a border which extends beyond its territory, is protected by immigration forces of two countries, and has some of the most sophisticated security technology in the world.
Nevertheless, persons entering the country ‘illegally’ have continued to succeed, and the UK-French border is but one means of crossing into the UK without the requisite papers. In an article about the European refugee situation, a Guardian reporter reflected on the notion of control as associated with migration, saying;
‘Perhaps, it is the knowledge that migration is a phenomenon out of state control which makes politicians so desperate to be seen to do something’ (The Guardian, 23/09/2009).
The repeatedly reactive responses to events on the UK-French border indeed indicates an ‘act now, think later’ attitude from the UK government which is reflective of the perceived constant need for states to control and manage migration, which in the EU context of borderless free movement has taken on a particularly prominent role in the public eye.
In 2014, the year before another general election in the UK, Calais once again featured prominently in the UK media. This time, the Conservative party were in government, in coalition with the Liberal Democrat Party. The Prime Minister David Cameron was facing criticism from his own MPs on his record for illegal immigration (Harris, 29/05/2014), and numbers of displaced persons in Calais were rapidly growing in tune with the beginning of what is now commonly cited as the biggest movement of refugees into Europe since World War II. Around this time French riot police once again began to raid the camps, which humanitarian organisations stationed there claimed ‘solves nothing…they evacuate and everything starts all over again’ (Willsher, 20/05/2014).
The mayor of Calais, Natasha Bouchart, has been particularly vocal in her criticism of the UK’s part in the continuation of the C-D refugee camps. In 2014 she threatened to shut down the port in protest over British immigration policy, which she claimed gave the impression to migrants of an ‘el dorado’, where they could claim generous benefits (Rawlins, 23/09/2014). A commentator in the Guardian claimed that these comments ‘gave the right wing press a field day’ (Marliere, 29/10/2014), because they reinforced the trope of ‘soft touch Britain’ so often repeated in relation to how the UK operates its immigration laws. In reality, he countered, Britain welcomed far few asylum seekers relative to other EU countries, and it should not be a source of shame that those who sought asylum there were treated humanely.
Throughout the following year, the numbers of people residing in the makeshift camps continued to grow. According to one team of researchers, numbers doubled from one thousand five hundred to over three thousand in the period from April to June 2015 (Davies, Isakjee, 2015: 93). Many of the residents had been forcibly removed from the ‘Jungle camp’ in an attempt to close it down, but had moved east to an old industrial site which remained one of the only points not raided by the French police. The squalid and dangerous conditions documented by researchers and NGOs were reported in the UK press, and pressure once again mounted on the UK government to take action. After scenes of persons trying to break into the Channel Tunnel and board lorries in their hundreds were reported, David Cameron described the scenes as ‘totally unacceptable’ (Mason, Grierson,
24/06/2015), a vague statement which seemed to exemplify the hands off approach the government was taking to the situation. The immigration minister commented that it was ‘up to the French to sort it out’ (ibid), and yet nightly people still risked their lives trying to leave France where they were
stranded in order to reach the UK. There was speculation in the right wing press as to the reason behind the UK’s reluctance to get involved, or comment on the way the French handled the situation. The Daily Mail claimed that because of the juxtaposed border controls, ‘we need the French more than they need us’, because France could pull out of an agreement which effectively favoured the UK (Slack, 28/07/2015). Speculation about the possibility of the bi-lateral border agreement ending increased in the context of the impending UK referendum on its membership of the EU, because of fears the French would retaliate to a ‘Brexit’ by refusing to allow the continuation of passports checks on the French side of the border. David Cameron himself went so far as to claim that ‘Jungle style’ camps would spring up around the port of Dover if Britain were to leave the EU, because passport controls would not take place until travellers were already across the channel (Slack, 09/02/2016). There has been no indication from the French government that this will occur now the UK has voted to leave the EU, but the mere suggestion has once again tied the refugee camps at the border to the wider political context of the EU.
The Guardian newspaper’s reporting in particular has viewed the C-D refugee camps through the prism of the EU. It noted that while most undocumented persons coming to the UK did not enter through the French ports, the ‘spike in numbers’ at that location showed that it was part of a wider EU problem (The Guardian, 25/06/2015). It claimed that the UK was in essence reluctant to partake in an EU-wide solution to the refugee ‘crisis’, but that the Calais situation had ‘forced the UK to accept a shared approach is necessary.’ This approach came in the form of an agreement between the UK and France signed in August 2015, after a summer of constant headlines about the ‘crisis’. According to UK Home Secretary Theresa May, the deal aimed to ‘relentlessly pursue and disrupt the callous criminal gangs that facilitate and profit from the smuggling of vulnerable people’, and the UK pledged £3.5 million to pay for new security measures, in addition to money already promised in the previous two years (BBC, 20/08/2015). As with previous bi-lateral agreements, the UK’s involvement was primarily financial and securitised, with little mention of how the potential asylum cases of many wishing to get to the UK would be dealt with. David Cameron’s comments on the deal
reflected this approach when he claimed most undocumented persons around Calais were trying to reach the UK for economic reasons, therefore; ‘what we can’t allow people to do is break into our country. The British people and I want to make sure that our border is secure’ (Khomeni,
18/08/2015).
Despite the focus by the UK and France on security measures to protect the border and stop people smuggling networks, displaced persons have continued to gravitate towards the C-D refugee camps at the border. In March 2016, the first state-sanctioned refugee camp since Sangatte was opened in
Dunkirk run first by the charity Medicins du Monde and since May 2016 directly by the French government. Furthermore, it has been reported that the increased security around Calais has served to displace settlements to other French port towns along the French coast. Among the numerous nationalities still gathering are said to be ‘several hundred’ Syrians, Afghans and Eritreans
(Gentleman, 03/11/2015), nationalities which generally received high asylum recognition rates in Europe. The presence of persons from these countries adds to the analytical confusion over how to categorise the residents of the C-D refugee camps. In principle many of them have been termed as ‘refugees’, but the lack of legal status means the way they are labelled changes continuously depending on who is labelling them.
From an overview of the history of the C-D refugee camps, it can be said that they are a unique phenomenon. Situated on the border of two rich western democracies, present in one form or another for almost twenty years, they have become de facto refugee camps, filled with persons with no legal status. Many who could claim asylum wish to wait until they may one day reach the UK, while others come from poverty stricken countries and hope to make a better life for themselves in the last country on their journey through Europe. The question of where the responsibility lies for dealing with the C-D refugee camps has been blurred by agreements which place the UK border and border security in French territory, but are silent on whether the UK should or should not accept those who are determined to settle there. Furthermore, the camps cannot be understood in terms of UK-French relations alone; the immigration policy of the EU is inextricably linked to the presence of displaced persons living at the border, and the way that responsibility towards them is perceived. The following section examines the ways in which EU immigration policy affects the UK and
therefore the degree to which the UK’s articulation of sovereignty in relation to the camps is potentially constrained.
