Disassembling the camp : the politics of policing exiles in Calais, France

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Disassembling the camp

The politics of policing exiles

in Calais, France

Maria Hagan

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Graduate School of Social Sciences Research MSc International Development Studies

2016-2018

Supervisor: Professor dr. Dennis Rodgers Second Reader: Dr. Ioana Vrabiescu

Email: haganmaria@gmail.com Date: 22nd_{of June 2018}

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my parents and Pauline, Damien and Elise for all of your encouragement and support. Thank you to my exceptional supervisor Dennis for going above and beyond, believing in my ability, and encouraging me to keep on going. Thank you Emiel for being so supportive from start to finish, for always talking it through, and for coming to meet the ‘President’ too.

I am so grateful to the friends and family who came to visit and help out in Calais, as well as to my committed and tireless friends working out of the warehouse. Thank you Rosie and Toni for sharing the most special experiences, to Adrien for sharing the most difficult ones, and to my many caravan-mates who kept spirits high at all times.

Above all, yekenyeley, manana, galatoomi, shukran to all of those whose names I cannot share, but who have brought me so very much. I wish for your journeys to end safely, and hope that I can do more.

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Abstract

Since the demolition of the infamous Calais Jungle in October 2016, the French state has hardened its policies against informal exile encampments. A complex institutional system of official processing centres has been established, marking a shift towards greater control of exiles present in France informally. These centres have become non-negotiable ‘humanitarian’ spaces, and as such, legitimise the violent policing of exiles beyond the official system. This is most visible in Calais, where hundreds of exiles have continued to settle in the border zone in scattered encampments known as ‘jungles’, which the Police systematically seek to destroy. By undermining the establishment of material camps, the Police therefore enforce exile nomadism, and undermine their human rights.

Drawing on five months of ethnographic fieldwork in Calais in 2017-18, this thesis reveals how the disassembling and reassembling of the informal camp space play out in practice. While there has been rich debate on the ‘space of the camp’ among urban geographers in recent years, these have often taken the materiality of a camp space for granted. This thesis draws on assemblage theory and binary processes of ‘smoothing’ and ‘striating’ space to describe strategies by which informal camps in Calais are disassembled by the Police, and how these practices are challenged by exiles and grassroots humanitarians who strive to reassemble camps. To capture this dynamic I propose and elaborate on the concept of the ‘contingent camp’ which looks at the camp not so much as a fixed place as an activity and process. It is the space inhabited by exiles but denied material consolidation – the space in a constant state of becoming and unbecoming.

This analysis contributes to wider discussions about the right to the camp. Through ground-level observation and analysis, I argue that the emergence of contingent camp politics signals a transition from a humanitarian response to exiles to one driven by a logic of securitisation, in which structures of protection are turned on their head. This jeopardises relationships of trust between the exile and the state; a system that seeks to police and control inadvertently multiplies the number of people seeking autonomy and informal alternatives. More generally, this ground-level case study highlights deeply flawed contemporary policymaking in response to the ‘migrant crisis’, providing concrete illustrations of the effects of this falling away of the humanitarian logic in favour of securitisation.

Keywords: exiles, securitisation, policing, camp space, contingent camp, assemblage, smoothing,

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Welcome to Calais

Calais, France, is an unromantic city by the sea: a city of fences, walls and police on patrol. It could have been a holiday town - instead its hotels host an uneasy clientele of riot police and grassroots volunteers. Faded Front National posters hang off billboards and migrant controversy invades polite conversation in cafés. As we drive into the city I can’t help but smirk at a signpost that reads: “Pas-de-Calais: We welcome the world!” There isn’t a single bookshop in town; local businesses have been sacrificed in favour of a massive out-of-town shopping centre. The streets are full of derelict buildings, reminders of the days of a flourishing lace industry. Bricked-up windows and doors deter the uninvited. The Eurotunnel and an expanding port keep Calais’s economy alive. Ironically they also attract the settlers blamed for the city’s misfortunes. For thousands, the transport hubs offer hope of crossing the Channel, no matter the levels of security and risks involved.

I first travelled to Calais from Paris out of simple curiosity. It was summer 2016, and news images of a bustling refugee camp known as ‘The Jungle’ seemed outlandish from the comforts of home. Walking in to the camp the unexpectedness of it was unsettling. I had pictured misery and destitution - and it was by no means a nice place - yet there were shops and hairdressers, restaurants and shelters, places of worship, schools and laughter. A three-day trip turned into a week, then three, as I took up activities ranging from meal preparation to teaching, disposing of rubbish and dead rats. At night we volunteers would retire from the camp, making way for smuggling, motorway charging, and tear gas grenades. The place was addictive and disquieting, the experience unique. When the state decreed the destruction of the camp a few months later I felt relief - but cannot deny a guilty regret at the disappearance of the place - and fear of what might replace it.

Returning to Calais a year later I am unsure what to expect. Passing the site of the former camp it’s as though it had never been there. Only a disfigured Banksy mural and graffiti messages offer clues of what the place once was: “Maybe this whole situation will just sort itself out…” Venturing into the industrial zone that neighbours the old camp, there’s a rancid smell from a massive chemical waste site. I see hundreds of people walking the streets and resting under pylons, playing cricket or rubbing their hands together by campfires to keep warm. A white van blasting music pulls up, enthusiastic volunteers jump out and set up a table. A line forms, food is served. A generator starts to hum and people rush for the plugs. Greetings and chatter are exchanged and it reminds me of the camp-that-was. Yet there’s no camp, not a makeshift home in sight. The dispossession seems near complete.

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I. Introduction

As the above vignette highlights, returning to Calais as a researcher, it was jarring to encounter material nothingness in a place that was still so full of life. Since my initial stay, the French State has introduced a zero-tolerance policy towards informal camps: any material structure resembling a camp, shelter or even a bed is systematically destroyed by police (Guillard 2017). Nonetheless, hundreds of exiles1 have continued to settle in the border zone in scattered encampments since early 2017. This thesis aims to shed light on the spatial politics of exile in Calais under these new conditions: how spaces of life are negotiated by authorities, grassroots humanitarians and exiles since the demolition of the infamous Calais Jungle2_{(officially referred to by authorities as the Camp de la Lande) in October 2016. My main}

goal has been to bear witness to and understand the significance of the politics of dispossession at play on-site, and how such practices could possibly be legitimised, particularly in a democratic state proud to be the birthplace of the Declaration of Human Rights (1789). Initial observations called for extensive ground-level exploration of the constant attacks on informal shelter deployed by the state, by listening to those who perform and experience it and unpacking the absurdities and incoherencies of a system designed not so much to resolve a humanitarian problem as to hide and silence it.

Over the course of five months of ethnographic fieldwork in Calais in 2017-18, I focused on exploring how space, materiality and territory are mobilised by and in relation to the exile. I observed how the policing of encampment plays out, is experienced and challenged by exiles and grassroots humanitarians who strive to maintain and rebuild the camp space, both materially and by performing the humanitarian principles associated with it. This analysis however departs from the more standard explorations of the camp as the space of life most commonly associated with exiles (Agier 2010, Minca 2015). In reaction to my experience of returning to the field described above, my goal rapidly became to capture an emerging phenomenon whereby the ‘space of the camp’ is constantly undercut, and has become a constant state of becoming and unbecoming. This is attempted through description and close analysis of the absurd cycles of camp construction and destruction that take place on-site daily in Calais. Such a study seems crucial at a time when informal arrivals to Europe have no end in sight, and the securitisation of borders is superseding humanitarian solutions, and active spatial dispossession has replaced humanitarianism as a policy towards exiles.

1 _{The use of the term ‘exile’ has been carefully chosen as opposed to ‘migrant’, ‘asylum seeker’ or ‘refugee’, because I do}

not care to bear judgement on the validity of asylum claims nor categorize the ‘legitimacy’ of these people, operating from the social justice perspective which considers the enjoyment of basic human rights applicable to all. The term ‘exile’ is also closer to the French term ‘exilé’’, the referent most commonly used by French-speaking volunteer humanitarians on the ground.

2 _{Though the use of the term Jungle has been criticised by some journalists as being problematic and dehumanising its}

inhabitants (eg. Harker 2016), I use the term here because it is the name predominantly used by exiles and volunteers on the ground. Moreover, there is an argument that the term encapsulates the extent of forced dispossession these people suffer. Finally the name ‘Jungle’ is said to derive from the word ‘dzhangal’ which in Pashto signifies ‘forest’. Therefore, the term emerges from exiles themselves. I use ‘Jungle’ to refer to the former camp, and ‘jungles’ to refer to scattered camps at the time of my research.

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Context: France

To grasp the constant state of becoming and unbecoming of the informal camp in Calais at the time of this research, it is essential to understand the broader political context in reaction to which such a space emerges. This section looks closely at context and actions carried out by the state since 2016 which have legitimised the transition from a contained informal camp (the former Jungle) to scattered camps (jungles) today. It is in the shadow of government action which seeks to put an end to informal exile encampment, by containing the exile in an institutionalised system, that these jungles and their inhabitants struggle to survive today.

Shifting strategies at the border

The appropriation of space by exiles has caused controversy in France since the early 1990s. The northern port city of Calais has become emblematic of migration and its management in France, as a key site of clandestine passage to the UK. In summer 2015 an informal camp mushroomed in Calais, on a site designated as a tolerated space of encampment by local authorities to shift exiles away from the city centre. The camp came to be known as the Jungle, and expanded fast with the assistance of volunteers who helped build basic shelters and infrastructure. By summer 2016 it was home to 8-10,000 people and threatening to authorities: it was increasingly politicised and difficult to control. The Jungle was visually spectacular: it attracted international media attention, rendering visible the human rights abuses taking place on-site daily and causing international outcry (Mould 2015; Sandri 2017). The visibility of these exiles left nobody indifferent: whether compassionate of exiles or afraid of them, all seemed to agree that something must be done about the insalubrious settlement. In October 2016, François Hollande finally declared that the camp was to be destroyed. The destruction was legitimised by the establishment of around 80 CAOs (Centres d'Accueil et d’Orientation)3 spread out across the country which exiles were sent to on buses. These centres offered a place of shelter in which exiles were encouraged to apply for asylum, promised that the Dublin III treaty4 would not be applied to their case (AFP 2016).

Although many exiles benefited from this exceptional opportunity to circumvent the Dublin treaty, fortunate enough to be in the right place at the right time, some were disappointed by the outcome of their asylum application, and this exceptional rule did not apply to newcomers. As a result, these centres did not solve the problem structurally; they merely attenuated it temporarily by providing a solution for some, legitimising the destruction of the controversial informal Jungle and increasing police presence in Calais to prevent a camp from re-emerging. The issue was also geographically displaced. Between the dismantling of the Jungle in late October 2016 and the summer of Macron’s

3_{Welcome and Orientation centres.}

4_{According to the Dublin convention, European states agree to a system whereby the first country an asylum-seeker arrives}

in has the responsibility to process his or her asylum claim. As a result, any country that an asylum-seeker may proceed to beyond the country of their arrival has the option of sending him or her back to their country of first entry. The Eurodac fingerprint database was set up in 2000 to determine the country of first entry: at border control authorities must take migrants’ fingerprints and submit them to the database. Failing to do so may expose them to European sanctions (Babels 2017, 15). It is because of this system that many exiles are afraid to claim asylum in a country that is not their country of entry: for fear of being sent back to a country overburdened with applications and offering few opportunities for their future.

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election as President in May 2017, images of encampments on the streets of Paris permeated the media: between February and July alone, 34 camp clearings were carried out (Pichot & Fattori 2017). By January 2017, many of those disappointed by the French system and newcomers began to move back into the northern border zone and resistance to their presence was active. The problem of exile presence was once again publicly visible. In May 2017 the police carried out 16 “anti-squat” operations in Calais:5_{33 sites were ‘dismantled’ and 20,900 kg of objects destroyed. By August these figures had}

risen to 26 “anti-squat” operations: over the course of the month 103 sites were dismantled and 31,000 kgs of objects destroyed (IGPN, IGA & IGGN 2017, 32).

In reaction to a re-emerging informal camp problem and just days before I started my fieldwork in August 2017, newly-appointed president Emmanuel Macron made a declaration at a citizenship ceremony in Orléans: “by the end of the year, I do not want to have women and men on the streets, in the woods, lost. It’s a question of dignity, it’s a question of humanity and of efficiency” (27/07/17). This statement roused my curiosity: Macron was committing to action ambitiously fast. But how might policy-making designed to straddle humanist and efficient processing manifest in practice? Particularly in informal spaces where many are seeking to circumvent the institutional system. I wanted to understand how this policy-making designed to straddle humanist and efficient human processing manifests in practice, especially considering the failure of the CAOs to fully solve the problem less than a year earlier. The day before Macron gave this speech, Human Rights Watch published a scathing report titled “‘Like Living in Hell’: Police Abuses Against Child and Adult Migrants in Calais” condemning police forces - the riot police (CRS) in particular - for violating “the prohibition on inhuman and degrading treatment as well as international standards on police conduct” (HRW 2017). The President’s promise to make informal camps disappear took on a threatening undertone, and violent policing has indeed become characteristic of pushing through Macron’s ‘efficient’ neoliberal policies (Davis 2018). How might state action against informal encampment be enforced without infringing on human rights?

Control & contain

The regime of the previous president François Hollande (2012-2017) set up a disperse-contain-process policy at the end of its mandate. It is off the back of this policy and under Macron that centres for hosting (or arguably sorting) exiles of various types were opened through late 2016 and 2017. During the period that I carried out this research, it became clear that this ‘solution’ of putting in place an even more complex system of processing centres marked a shift towards greater control and the sorting of exiles according to administrative status. Minca argues that the institutionalised camp is a violent political technology which emerges when a state does not know how to qualify people spatially, but seeks to govern their mobility and define their proper ‘place’ (2015, 91). The functions of these places of containment are often as abstract as their acronyms (CAO, CHU(M), PRAHDA, DPAR, CAES,

5 _{‘Anti-squat’ operations are in fact destructions of informal encampments as opposed to squatted buildings: Calais has}

enforced a no-squatting policy in the city’s empty buildings successfully since exiles were pushed out of the city centre to the site of the Jungle in 2014.

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DEMIE6 etc.). The threat of centres like the DPAR (Facility for Preparing Returns) for example is particularly dubious and unattractive to the exile seeking asylum. There is a clear desire to define a proper space for all administrative categories of a population perceived as problematic. Pallister-Wilkins observes a process of what she calls ‘humanitarian triage’: “sovereign processes of control designed around exclusive practices of exclusion and exile through deportation rather than the inclusive ideal of universal humanity” (2016). It is a framework which seeks, by having an institution in which to fit each migrant ‘type’, to guarantee that there should be no such thing as being outside of the state system. The question of what happens to exiles who evade this web of processing establishments confronted with a system which no longer tolerates their extra-institutional presence is central to this thesis.

Informal camps of exiled populations who, symbolically at least, are ‘deserving’ of assistance, have existed in France for decades. The visibility of these groups and conflicting interpretations about them among the general public, especially since the 2015 ‘migrant crisis’, have led to their being understood as groups who cannot be neglected and must be actively acted upon. The contrast is stark between infrastructurally concrete, ordered and institutional spaces of containment for the exile and fragile, precarious and contested informal spaces persisting beyond that system. This research seeks to shed light on the connection between these different types of spaces and the practices that perpetuate them. While at first it seemed that institutional centres did not have the capacity to hold all the inhabitants of the country’s swelling encampments, it soon became clear that the problem was not only one of capacity, but of the undesirability of the system in the eye of the exile who prefers to choose an informal and precarious alternative. The stakes are too high to risk entering a system which, once in its grasp, will bind you to your ‘deserved’ category or declare you as ‘undeserving’. There is a tension and discord between the system put in place by the state in active response to this situation, and the decision-making of some groups of exiles who choose not to approach it. The state is thus caught in a double bind: it is pressured to develop an institutional system, yet criticised for failing to put an end to informal encampment as a result of these exiles’ desire for autonomy. The public discourse of efficiency as embodied by the image of the processing centre is undercut by the image of families living in tents and mud. It confronts the hospitable self-image of the state. To what extent does this legitimise the state to wage a war on the informal camp and forcing people to engage with the system?

This section has outlined the context in which this research has been carried out, and described and analysed the institutional framework and political ideology which overshadow the informal life spaces under study. The focus of this research is on the informal camp space in Calais at the time of this research: the scattered jungles that have replaced the contained former Jungle since early 2017. By comparing these different types of camp spaces, the processes leading from one to the other and the practices and dynamics which emerge within them, we will learn more about the political logic of exile governance at play in France at present.

6 _{Centre d'Accueil et d’Orientation (CAO), Centre d’Hébergement d’Urgence pour Migrants (CHU(M)), Programme}

d’accueil et d’hébergement des demandeurs d’asile (PRAHDA), Dispositif de “Préparation au Retour” (DPAR), Centres d'Accueil et d’Examination des Situations (CAES), Dispositif d'Évaluation des Mineurs Isolés Étrangers (DEMIE) (La Cimade 2018).

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Fieldsite: Calais

Calais is an emblematic border city which notoriously serves as a policy testing ground and performance site for French migration politics. The situation is constantly changing, therefore it is important to situate this research in a specific timeframe. Between August 2017 and late January 2018, numbers of displaced people in Calais fluctuated between 400 and 800, primarily of Afghan, Eritrean and Ethiopian origins, as well as smaller Sudanese and Kurdish groups. A minute proportion are women. Spatially, their lives revolve around 5 food and material distribution points, various car parks, roundabouts, stretches of motorway, the port, and scattered informal encampments in forests and industrial areas (jungles), hidden as best possible from marauding police. Most are trying to cross to the UK daily, by sneaking onto vehicles, usually lorries (that seem to be headed for the ferry port or the Channel tunnel) when they are stationary at petrol stations, on car parks, or stuck in traffic. Many use smugglers to facilitate this process, and strategic points of attempted crossing are heavily policed.

Despite the motorway overhead and stench of the neighbouring industrial zone, the former site of the Jungle is in the process of being reappropriated - ‘renatured’ - as an outdoor space for locals to enjoy (Conservatoire du Littoral 2017). Just a few hundred metres down the road is what – despite the huge contrast in size with the previous one – has become known as the ‘new Jungle’, the largest new settlement to have emerged since the destruction of the Jungle, where 200-300 people of all nationalities live, sleep and hide on and around the waste sites for surrounding chemical plants. A smaller community of around 25 people settles in the city centre, alternately taking shelter in people’s homes and beneath the bridges of the canal. Four other settlements are mono-national and consist of 40-100 people each. These are tucked away in forest areas, scattered and hidden in the greenery on the fringes of Calais and the neighbouring commune of Marck. In comparison with these numbers, there were 1,130 police and gendarmes stationed in the Calais area in January 2018, as the President boasted in a speech delivered in the city in January (16/01/18).

A question that often arises about Calais is simply why people are there. What it is that drives exiles to try and cross the Channel considering the risks involved, and that everything is done to make life there unbearable. It is important to reflect on this question. Statistics tell us that 88.9% of exiles in Calais are there because they want to go to the UK (RRDP 2017, 6). But such figures can be misleading: countless conversations on this topic have led me to observe that the UK is not a gilded dream for all. While many indeed picture an easy life within a tight-knit community in London, there are also many for whom the UK is little more than a last resort, the next place to try. After often surviving a perilous dinghy-crossing over the Mediterranean, many exiles are left to drift through the European asylum system, running from the fingerprints snatched from them on the shores of Italy or Greece. Most have already been disappointed by an application process elsewhere that cost them months if not years of waiting time. Many of my fragmented conversations in Calais were in German, French or Dutch. Often, the ‘UK dream’ is not for lack of trying elsewhere, it is a last opportunity to seize self-determination in a system so eager to strip you of it.

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France has never declared the situation in Calais a humanitarian crisis on its soil, preventing the intervention of international aid agencies like the UNHCR (Mould 2015). National charities and organisations present on-site tend to be acting of their own initiative, such as the Secours Catholique who carry out clothing distributions and operate a day centre, the Croix-Rouge that offers mobile healthcare, and Gynécologie sans Frontières who provide mobile first aid. There are also local citizen grassroots organisation such as Salam who provide breakfast at four sites, and the Legal Shelter who provide legal advice. Several French and UK charities and grassroots organisations work collaboratively out of a warehouse, all of them largely operating off donations: the Refugee Community Kitchen (RCK) who prepare meals for Calais and Dunkirk and carry out two distributions twice a day, Utopia56 who serve RCK meals at four distribution points twice a day, Help Refugees who distribute material items, L’Auberge des Migrants who recruit volunteers and participate in the other organisations’ activities, the InfoBus which delivers mobile WiFi from a van and news reports in exiles’ own languages, and the SchoolBus which offers classes and workshops to those at the biggest jungle. I spent most of my time with the organisations working out of this warehouse when participating in humanitarian activities.

Reflecting on theory

This field site struck me as unique because the organic process of shelter-building by exiles was being actively hindered. It seemed absurd that the human right to adequate housing (Declaration of Human Rights 1948, art. 25) was being undercut by police on the orders of a democratic state, actively and at considerable expense. The shift from neglect of the exile – which is what was often blamed for the emergence of the original Jungle – to active deterrence through continuous resistance to their consolidation of shelter is of central interest here. The scattered encampments I could observe harboured many elements characteristic of the camp: namely the presence of the exile, the aid worker and figures of authority seeking to exercise control. This brought me to reflect on the camp, the space of life most commonly associated with the exile (Agamben 2000, Agier 2010, Minca 2015), and to frame this research in spatial terms as my conceptual framework shall illustrate. Thinking in terms of the camp - or absences of the camp - was enhanced by the fact that the memory of the former Jungle appeared to linger in Calais as a reminder of what the authorities do not want, and what humanitarians and exiles are striving for in the absence of a suitable alternative.

The absence of material permanence in exiles’ encampments in Calais is at odds with existing debates on the camp which tend to take its physicality for granted. The camp as an established space has been theorised at length, but the processes leading to its physical construction - or preventing its consolidation - are underexplored. I was unable to latch on to existing theory to conceptualise the field site in complete theoretical terms, so it became clear that developing theoretical language and concepts to deal with processes of enforced spatial absence is essential. This thesis seeks to rise to this challenge, building off existing debates and working with observations and narratives of experience gathered on the ground to contribute to developing a theory of the contingent camp. This argues for thinking about liminal spaces whose consolidation is actively undercut, and the practices and implications of

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maintaining these spatial absences despite the continued presence of exiles. Devoting research to this issue is essential for understanding new spaces symptomatic of emerging politics of (in)hospitality, particularly in advanced economies such as France which have the means to invest in heavy securitisation to manage undesirable presence through policing operations and the establishment of obscure spaces of biopolitical management.

The material absence of the camp in Calais is not for lack of material provisions but for the failure of these to assemble. This drew me towards thinking about my field site in terms of assemblage theory, according to which research “is interested in disassembling phenomena we tend to take for granted and examin[ing] how they are made up by making diverse elements hold together as a whole for a while (territorialisation) but [are] subject to continuous centrifugal forces at the same time (deterritorialisation)” (Müller 2015). At a time when there is no end in sight to the arrival of exiles to Europe let alone France, adopting an assemblage approach to conceptualising the absence of a camp is a useful instance of what Latour calls ‘oligopticon’ (2005a in Müller 2015, 33): by examining one space extensively we learn about the system and network within which that type of space is embedded. This shall be further explored in the conceptual framework (chapter II).

Chapter summaries

Chapter II introduces the theoretical debates that underpin my analysis and defines my research questions. I elaborate on the central concept of the camp and the value of thinking about the camp space through the spatial lens of assemblage theory, focusing in particular on the way that processes of ‘striation’ and ‘smoothing’ underpin linked forms of ‘disassembling’ and ‘reassembling’. I consider several types of camp assemblage and the actors and dynamics that resist or facilitate its consolidation. This anchors my analysis in recent geographical debates and serves as a starting-point for theoretical analysis and innovation in the empirical chapters that follow.

In chapter III I present my research questions and operationalisation of key concepts, followed by chapter IV where I outline my research design and reflect on the methods that I used to conduct this research. I describe my analytical strategy of grounded-theory, elaborate on my positionality and situate myself in the field, reflecting on the ethical challenges I faced and the limitations of my study.

My first empirical chapter, chapter IV, is a visual essay which illustrates the contrast between the institutionalised camp, the former camp, and the contingent camp as it is now. It presents images collected on-site to enhance reader understanding of the field site and context, combining each page of images with a short explanation. This conveys the highly material and thus visible dimensions of the conceptual reflections at play.

In chapter VI, I describe and analyse how the informal camp is made contingent in Calais. I reveal how the life spaces of exiles are policed through the threat of containment and the taking apart of the camp. I conceptualise these strategies as contributing to a process of striation. I explore the mechanics of this

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policing and how it operates both invisibly by determining territories of life, and visibly through the material destruction of the camp. I describe how this is experienced by the exile as physical and psychological harassment, and how the police officer rationalises his actions. From this chapter I reflect theoretically on these processes of striation, and how they undercut and expose the humanitarian claims of the system offered by the state.

In reaction to chapter VI, chapter VII describes how exiles and humanitarians reclaim and seek to reassemble the camp through smoothing processes, namely pulling together the camps and facilitating the rhizomatic perpetuation of exile presence and support in Calais. I explore how destructive policing operations are contested through material reconstruction, and the performance of humanitarian principles traditionally associated with the refugee camp. I identify strategies exiles and humanitarians develop to try and hold authorities accountable for their destructive actions, and how this places constant pressure on police and the state, calling out the unhumanitarian actions employed to maintain France’s institutional system. It reveals the absurdity of cycles of destruction and reconstruction experienced by all actors involved. I develop my theoretical reflections to convey how the strategies outlined in this chapter constitute an attempted reassembling of humanitarianism in Calais.

The final chapter, chapter VIII, draws on the preceding empirical chapters to reach a conclusion examining the value of conceptualising the contingent camp and what it represents. Here I reflect on what it reveals the management of informal settlers, asylum policy and human rights in France. I give theoretical and contextual structure to seemingly absurd processes of camp-building and destruction in Calais, and elaborate on the value of using this concept for further research in a broader French and European context.

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II. Conceptual framework

This thesis seeks to analyse how the informal camp is contested and negotiated in Calais. This section frames this focus theoretically and in-context, exploring existing thought on the camp and reflecting on how it relates to the case study of Calais. Taking the institutionalised camp as the backdrop against which negotiations of the informal camp play out, I reflect on the value of conceptualising the informal camp as an assemblage which emerged in reaction to the formal space. I explore how the geographies of two types of informal camp space (the organic camp and the contingent camp) which have emerged in Calais may be understood as assemblages, before investigating the processes and strategies that challenge the establishment of an informal camp at the time of this research, imposing constant unbecoming upon it. Theoretical and conceptual literature on assemblage theory, the camp and the practices and actors associated with the camp (exiles, humanitarians and authorities) are brought into conversation to identify gaps in research, and lay the foundation for understanding diverse forms of control and resistance within the spatial parameters associated with the exile living informally in Calais.

The camp as assemblage

When we think of the camp, a grouping of shelters and people springs to mind. Beyond that it becomes difficult to define, the diversity of camp types rendering the concept both evocative and vague. The openness of the concept can however be revelatory. As Hailey argues, camps: “provide an important gauge of local and global situations. To understand a camp’s paradoxes is to begin to comprehend our current spaces, inexorably affected by militaristic, political and romantic extremes” (2009, 1-2). It is important to examine the nature of the camp space to draw out knowledge of the political context, society and ideologies that generate it. Hailey argues that the camp is in effect spatial practice, combining field and event, and at the confluence of mental and social space. “As a spatial production, whether at the scale of the individual or a city, camp is both field of research and a kind of contemporary field research” (ibid, 3). These definitions of the camp draw attention to the spatiality and materiality of the camp, as well as the togetherness of people and objects within a space that constitute it. They also draw attention to the value of understanding the camp as a dynamic space reflexive of the geopolitical context in which it emerges.

The point of departure for this research was the realisation that a camp had not reassembled in Calais since the demolition of the Jungle - despite a re-emergence of exiles. Although it quickly became apparent that several of the actors, materialities and practices associated with the camp space were still present, they were unable to come together and anchor themselves to a space which might become a place of communal life: a camp. It is intuitive then to think about the camp as an assemblage: the product of certain actors, discourses and material elements coming together and evolving constantly. Deleuze and Guattari propose assemblage theory as a tool for exploring connections between power and space, which they argue are inextricably linked (1983; 2013). They consider that power and

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identity are bound up in a fluid process of territorialisation and de/reterritorialisation of social processes and structures (2013). For clarity, I will discuss the camp not in terms of deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation, but in terms of disassemblage and reassemblage. These terms are evocative and reflect the impermanence and fragility of the camp spaces under discussion, whose precise locations are fluid and whose main obstacle is the process of assembling. If we consider the camp an assembled entity, then the destruction of the camp can be understood as an act of disassemblage followed by continuous processes of attempted reassemblage. Understanding the camp in this way allows for us to work “between detailed occurrence and territorial context, seeking to understand the physical, phenomenal, and experiential facets of the contemporary camp” (Hailey 2009, 17).

Within assemblage theory, enunciations, actors and the material are understood to be linked rhizomatically: social elements are drawn together at specific spatio-temporal conjunctures and constantly evolving (Li, 2007, 265). Indeed the camp evolves rhizomatically: transforming spatially over time according to policy, public opinion, the actants that inhabit and contain it and enter into mutually constitutive relations (Abourahme 2014). Understanding the informal camp as an assemblage of actants in a constant process is helpful for this research, presenting “a way of approaching, understanding, or representing relations between multiple actants (actors both human and material) that are variously present or absent, near or far, interior or exterior, human and nonhuman” (Dovey, 2010 in McFarlane, 2011). Indeed these camps are such that their geography and materiality in particular may radically change from one day to the next.

Materiality

Recent debates on the camp tend to omit its materiality, focusing on its juridico-political nature (Abourahme 2014). Scrutiny of what Abourahme refers to as the “very ‘stuff’ of encampment” and how it is mediated in the everyday is essential for revealing how the material may challenge or enable political claims, offering insight to the biopolitical strategies and subjectivities of that camp (Abourahme 2014, 202-3). It is not for lack of a camp appearance that living spaces in Calais are devoid of campness or camp ‘stuff’. The question is how and why this ‘stuff’ fails to accumulate and assemble into the expected camp infrastructure - even if that camp is informal and fragile. This is central to the Calais case study where material manifestations of presence are constantly destroyed. It is particularly evocative considering that the informal and materially fragile camp in Calais emerges in reaction to a physical and materially solid border. Minister of the Interior Gérard Collomb described Calais as both a “mirage” and a “wall” (02/02/18), somewhat summing up this material discrepancy between the ability of material expression available to the exile and that available to the state.

The forensic architecture movement offers useful tools for thinking about materiality analytically. Advocates argue for using space and the material as witnesses: the built environment shifts from illustrating violence to providing knowledge about it (Weizman, Tavares, Schuppli & Studio 2010, 59). Weizman describes the emergence of an ‘object-oriented juridical culture’: in international humanitarian law, the testimony-bearing witness is replaced by the forensics of objects (2010, 14). This development is particularly relevant when thinking about the exile in Calais: the body is under

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threat and at a difficulty to bear witness due to its informal presence on the territory and reluctance to testify to authorities - who perpetrate violence against them. If the testimony of the victim is disregarded or unmobilised, then other elements of the assemblage like the material must be considered. As Weizman et al elaborate: “the object/thing or structure should not be seen in isolation, but as part of a complex assemblage, networked into ever shifting sets of relations - people, spaces and other things, human and non-human, that are holding together social and political relations” (Weizman, Tavares, Schuppli & Studio 2010, 62). So, by studying the combinations of relations between humans and the material, the assemblage may be revelatory of unexpressed, unidentified or undenounced social and political processes. The precarity of the contingent camp and dynamic cycles of (de)construction draw attention to this embeddedness of the material in power relations.

The negotiation process: striation & smoothing

Deleuze & Guattari distinguish striated space of containment and boundary-making imposed by a hierarchical state from smooth space, characterised by fluidity and informality (2013, 559). The displaced person camping illicitly would be associated with the nomadic smooth space, while authorities and the institutionalised camp would be associated with the striated. Deleuze and Guattari caution that the two types of space only exist in mixture, that what is of interest is the process and coexistence of operations of striation and smoothing, and how they generate one another (2013, 581). As McFarlane explains, “assemblage does more than emphasise a set of connections between sites in that it draws attention to history, labour, materiality and performance. Assemblage points to re-assembling and disre-assembling, to dispersion and transformation” (McFarlane 2009, 566). This emphasis on unmaking and remaking in assemblage theory resonates with the informal camp as caught up in a perpetual process of negotiation The inability to reassemble a camp in Calais, the dispersion and destruction of its materiality, calls for close attention to all of these elements and how they intersect to generate constant cycles of becoming and unbecoming on the ground. This unending cycle of assembling and disassembling the camp is absurd to the onlooker, but by examining these processes in detail we may derive sense and significance from them.

Processes of striation and smoothing and the practices and goals that constitute them are manifold. In the context of negotiating the contingent camp in France, four key strategies for striating and smoothing may be identified. Within striation, there is a binary of taking apart (disassembling) the camp and

containing the exile. These striating strategies are bound up with one another: by taking apart the

informal camp, authorities seek to striate informal life spaces to instead contain the exile within the system of institutionalised camps offered by the state as shall be explored below. In contrast with these processes of striation, processes of smoothing in France are constructed around the binary strategies of pulling together (reassembling) the informal camp space, and the rhizomatic perpetuation of exile presence and support beyond the contained system of the state. Similarly to the striation strategies, these are inextricably bound up because they maintain and legitimise one another: the persistent practice of reassembling the camp allows the exile to occupy a space and persist nomadically in defiance of state striation mechanisms, adapting and assembling support in a rhizomatic way on the ground, as well as nationally and internationally through the perpetuation of practices and human rights

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discourses that legitimise informal presence. Combining these strategies, the smoothing process is imminent, creative and always shifting: an assemblage with tentacles, sprawling in defiance of the bounded state apparatus. It is important to detect these interdependent binaries as they are rather unique to the situation in Calais at the time of this research: without taking apart the informal camp, the containment of the exile living informally is difficult to legitimise and enforce. In parallel, the material pulling together of the camp would be impossible without the perpetuated presence of exiles and their allies whose rhizomatic character enables the assemblage to hold.

Assemblage theory invites the use of descriptive techniques which meet the intentions of this research well. It seeks to understand various forms of encampment and the relations constructing them over time and space, emphasising the importance of keeping a trace of what happens in illegitimate spaces which are under constant pressure to disappear, caught between acts of smoothing and striation. This is all the more crucial considering that state standards and ideals are liable to fall away in times of crisis and in reaction to the informal: attacks on presence can become violent. Associations between actants in such ephemeral situations must be traced and mapped. Li describes the government apparatus as a network of fragile, risky relays assembled in a will to govern, or to improve social processes (Li, 2007, 264). Observing different moments of conjuncture within assemblages is what enables us to analyse “how the elements of an assemblage might - or might not - be made to cohere” (ibid, 264). It is important then to understand the elements and processes that render the Calais camp contingent at the time of this research. The ways in which a political discourse plays out on the ground and is performed and implemented by state actors (police in particular) may shed greater, nuanced light on the logic according to which the governance of exiles is sought and imposed.

Geographies of the camp

To explore and analyse the contingency of the camp in Calais at present, it is important to understand the geography of the informal camp space that preceded it, and the system in reaction to which it has developed. The shift in informal camp spaces responds to a regime change that aims to put an end to informal exile presence in the border zone, and an increasing securitisation of the border in reaction to which the contingent camp has developed. Although I have touched upon these various camp spaces already, in the introductory chapter they are discussed in more depth and in relation to assemblage theory. This section opens with a discussion of the institutionalised camp, crucial contextual knowledge for understanding the raison d’être of the organic and contingent camp spaces, explorations of which then follow.

The institutionalised camp: towards perfect striation

The institutionalised camp is symbolic of a regime change in France: from one that tolerated and neglected the informal camp (allowing it to reach the status of organic camp, characterised by autogestion as explored below) to one that actively striates the informal camp by perpetually unmaking

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it.7 By innovating a variety of institutionalised spaces in which the exile may be contained, this regime shift through late 2016-2017 also prompted change in the informal camp spaces which may be claimed by exiles in Calais: from the organic camp to the contingent camp as explored below. The institutionalised camp is the main vector via which this transition has been legitimised and facilitated, and thus a fundamental camp-type to be explored in relation to and as a backdrop to its informal alternatives.

The dismantling of the Jungle in late October 2016 was heavily securitised: 1.250 extra policemen were assigned to the site in addition to a massive pre-existing force (MSF 2017). In the weeks that preceded and followed, a dispositif of institutionalised camps began to assemble across France responding to a double imperative of controlling and caring for an exiled population (Tiktin 2005). Exiles were sent on buses to these centres (CAOs) with little choice over or information about their destinations. Mould describes the scattering of migrants across the country in the wake of the dismantling as a deliberate domicidal strategy designed to destroy friendships and solidarity networks (2015, 7). This can be read as a striating act: exiles are attacked through a disassembling of the camp on social as well as material and spatial levels. As described in the introduction, in the wake of this destruction and dispersal, various new centres for hosting (or arguably sorting) exiles then opened through 2016-17. The creation of new, diverse spaces in which to contain the exile resonates with Agier’s interpretation of the camp as desirous of managing undesirable population groups, separating clean, healthy and visible people from obscure, ill and invisible leftovers (ibid, 14). This image is powerful, and the humanitarianism of the refugee camp has undergone considerable academic scrutiny (Agamben 2000; Gilroy 2004; Crisp 2012; Minca 2015; Laclau & Brugère 2017). According to Minca, by setting up a putative system of camps across the nation - spaces in which the exile may be contained - an illusion of positive action is created by spatialising the ‘problem’ (2015, 81). These institutionalised camps represent striation in the sense of containment: limiting exiles to a defined and bounded space of life governed by the state.

The diversity of camp types that have emerged across France may be understood as a dispositif. In line with assemblage theorists, Foucault understands the dispositif as a material-discursive assemblage of heterogeneous “discourses, institutions, architectural forms, regulatory decisions, laws, administrative measures, scientific statements, philosophical, moral and philanthropic propositions” which come together in response to urgency (1977, 194). He considers urgency to be at the foundation of an apparatus, facilitating its dominant strategic function and ability to take control of - to striate - a situation or population (ibid, 195). The idea of a dispositif of camps assembling as a result of the state of exception (Agamben 1998) rings particularly true in contemporary France, which declared a state of emergency following the terrorist attacks carried out against civilians in Paris in November 2015, and was repeatedly renewed for over two years. Indeed, Agamben observes that the camp is not a humanitarian space necessarily, but a space of limbo symptomatic of the modern nation state (2015).

7_{At the end of his Presidency, Hollande (centre-left Parti Socialiste) addressed the issue of informal exile encampment by}

setting up a system of camp destruction and exile dispersal which the new government (under Macron centrist-liberal La République en Marche) took to a whole new level.

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The camp then may be understood as a space of exception, a space of biopolitical control where social and political power are exerted over defenceless ‘bare’ human life (Foucault 1998, 173). Deleuze & Guattari explain that striation seeks to homogenise (2013): the exile was humanised by the organic camp space and the social assemblage that it created (as shall be explored in the following section), but by passing through the intitutionalised camp, the exile may be reclaimed, homogenised and framed in the eye of the state.

In reaction to the informal presence of exiles and in an effort to legitimise informal camps, the French state has assembled various institutional spaces in reaction to each profile an exile might be shown to have. By having an institution to fit each migrant ‘type’ and a legislation according to which these types might be defined, this framework seeks a guarantee that there should be no such thing as being outside of the system. In order to contain exiles, the institutionalised camp assemblage needs to hold together firmly: it draws on several actants to do so. Infrastructurally strong spaces allow the state to qualify these spaces as ‘centres’ rather than ‘camps’, their functioning maintained by a dense administrative system, and defended and filled by agents and technologies which assemble to secure them. As Minca argues: “the institutional camp should be treated as a violent political technology that emerges every time the state does not know how to qualify people in spatial terms, but at the same time needs to govern their mobility and define their proper ‘place’” (2015, 91). This goes beyond a desire to contain the exiled body to a desire to dominate and eradicate its informal presence.

The organic camp: towards perfect smoothing

The former Jungle camp was symptomatic of the emergence of ‘fortress Europe’ in response to increased migration flows: exiles eager to reach the United Kingdom are stopped on their journey by an intricate network of fences, walls and border security technology. This leads to stagnation: exiles develop temporary settlements while attempting clandestine passage. The Jungle developed on an industrial site designated by authorities as a tolerated space of encampment in 2014. Though it was a wasteland, the attribution of this unattractive place to exiles acknowledged their primary need for a space of life. Inadvertently it legitimised the assemblage of an informal camp which grew beyond state expectation through resourceful acts of smoothing. Indeed the Jungle was a dynamic space, tolerated though neglected by the state (Mould 2015). It was demonstrative of the agency and resilience of the exile: Mould highlights the city-ness, the place-ness of the Calais Jungle, describing it as “a site of cultural and social richness” (2015, 4) with “ingeniously designed shopfronts, the impressively sacred churches and mosques” (ibid, 15). He describes activities in the Jungle led by camp residents assisted by volunteers as a “collaborative place-making process” (ibid, 11), referring to Lefebvrian ‘autogestion’ as the moment when a group rejects passive acceptance of its conditions, preferring to master them. By 2016 the camp was home to an estimated 8.000 people and offered shops and restaurants, schools, mosques, a church, barbershops, a nightclub and more (ibid).

At the time of the Jungle, the institutionalised system was not non-existent, but less ‘efficient’ and determined to sort exiles, as well as having a lower capacity. A politics of neglectful tolerance of exiles living informally in Calais (rather than their imposed containment) meant that they could approach the

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system of their own accord.8 The Jungle was symbolic of a loss of striated control over the informal camp space, though it was under a constant threat of destruction. As it developed it became highly illustrative of the smooth space claimed by the nomad as described by Deleuze & Guattari (2013). The camp defied its hopelessness by growing organically and becoming a place with borders and thresholds rather than an abstract space. Despite its impermanence, its ability to assemble allowed it to spiral out and for its assemblage to grow rhizomatically over time. Although the ability of the camp to develop materially was always challenged, it grew beyond its tolerated physical boundaries in ways unanticipated by the state, through its ability to assemble multi-level support from international volunteers and media mobilising a human rights discourse. It is a form of resistance that Butler describes as an “acting together that opens up time and space outside and against the temporality and established architecture of the regime” (2011). Paradoxically the neglected camp was a fragile assemblage; both an organic and contained space, alive yet vulnerable to destruction at any moment. Becoming an assembled space of urban sociality the organic camp posed the threat of becoming a polis in the eyes of state (Agier 2002): rooted in space, evolving and increasingly politicised, it became a space of agency difficult for authorities to control. This led to the ultimate act of striation: the destruction of the camp in October 2016. It is important to bear this assembled informal camp space in mind when considering spaces of life for exiles in Calais today: the demolished camp lives on as a spectral presence in the minds of exiles, humanitarians and authorities as well as the public. There has been a transition from the loud and chaotic camp, to invisible and silenced contingent camps explored below. This memory of the camp that could be if allowed to assemble affects strategies, imaginaries as well as acts of force against the attempted assemblage of these elements.

The contingent camp: between striation & smoothing

The organic camp has undergone considerable academic scrutiny in recent years, attractive in its informality and sociality: there has been a trend among urban geographers to conceptualise liminal spaces of life for exiles as politicised spaces facilitating empowerment (Sanyal 2011; Sigona 2015; Woroniecka-Krzyzanowska 2017). However, the French situation since the demolition of the Jungle challenges this trend, calling for reflection on liminal spaces of life for exiles whose very ability to assemble is actively undercut by authorities. Indeed while the camp as an established space has been theorised at length, the processes leading to its physical construction - or preventing its consolidation - are underexplored. Devoting research to this issue is essential for understanding new spaces symptomatic of emerging politics of (in)hospitality, particularly in advanced economies such as France which have the means to invest in heavy securitisation to manage undesirable presence, through policing operations and the establishment of obscure spaces of containment and biopolitical management.

8_{When I was volunteering in the Jungle in August 2016, buses would come twice a week to take exiles to CAOs in a}

disorganised fashion, kept in order by police who would have exiles kneel at their feet while a préfecture employee called out a few names, then choosing others randomly to fill the remaining seats on the bus (informal discussion 23/08/2016). By summer 2017, there were more exiles wanting to go than the buses could take, leading many to face repeated disappointment despite having waited for the buses to arrive for hours.

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Thinking about the camp in terms of an assemblage that develops rhizomatically and is constantly being negotiated highlights the value of thinking about the informal camp in Calais at the time of this research as a contingent camp: it emerges sporadically because the coming together of elements associated with the camp is constantly under threat, hindered or destroyed until it seeks to reassemble. As shall be explored in chapter VII, exiles in Calais seek to challenge the institutionalised camp through acts of smoothing in the same way exiles did at the time of the Jungle. However these acts of smoothing are systematically striated in the sense of being constantly taken apart as shall be explored in detail in chapter VI. The tensions of a contingent camp (in a constant state of becoming and unbecoming; between presence and absence) may be captured by paying close attention to the inability of its assemblage to physically hold. The examination of how a camp assemblage functions and changes over time may allow for the detection of violences and their nature, as well as the key actants and sociomaterialities that undercut it. The processual approach advocated by assemblage theorists is useful for understanding the contingency of the camp as it is negotiated in Calais at present. The camp is made contingent through a repeated assembling of camp actants (smoothing) followed by operations of disassembling (striating), and consequent attempted reassembling (smoothing).

Striation & disassembling

This section provides the theoretical grounding for thinking about how the camp is striated. The binary of strategies which seek to contain the exile while taking apart the informal camp are drawn upon, in combination with the practices which illustrate how these strategies play out. This section identifies the key actors involved in striating operations (the police), the act of disassembling materialities and groupings of people, the discourses that legitimise acts that disassemble, and how and why they are performed. It seeks to reveal how these various dimensions assemble to prevent an informal camp from re-emerging.

Discourse of care & control

Assemblage theory draws attention to discourse as well as human and material actants; Deleuze and Guattari describe collective assemblages of enunciation as intertwined with machinic assemblages (2013). Indeed, discourse is an active component mobilised by actors to hold together or resist the emergence of a certain type of assemblage. In Calais, the contingency of the camp is maintained by an interweaving of discourses of humanitarianism and securitisation. Pallister-Wilkins observes that there is a paradoxical “at risk and a risk dichotomy” within border policing (2015, 54): a group of people (exiles) generally considered to be at risk become a risk when they enter the space which is marked by a border and under the responsibility of border police (ibid). There is an uneasy coexistence of discourses at work in Calais which maintain the camp in this constant state of becoming an unbecoming: a ‘zero-migrant tolerance’ policy discursively framed as the only humanitarian response to exile presence in Calais is put forward by the state, legitimising the destruction of informal settlements. As Agier argues, discourses of humanitarianism and securitisation are often conflated: humanitarian intervention comes hand in hand with police management, and aid at the price of control (2010).

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A tenuous link has been drawn between exiles and terrorists in the public imaginary by politicians and the mass media in Europe. Particularly since the height of the ‘migrant crisis’ in summer 2015, a discourse legitimising increased securitisation of these groups has been popularised. The ‘illegalisation’ of exile presence in European cities indeed simultaneously renders their bodies visible as a threat to public security while denying their presence in public spaces and spheres (Bialasiewicz 2017, 16). The displaced in contingent camps are no longer contained apart from society, but come into contact with local populations. As a result, spatial ‘problems’ in the city are policed through a rhetoric of holding to heart the interest of a nation’s citizens, undermining the right of the displaced to the city as a place of sanctuary and making the urban experience one of living state authority in the everyday (ibid, 186-7). Since the end of the state of emergency in November 2017, several ‘exceptional’ clauses have been written into French counter-terrorism law (Fansten 2017), pushed through with a discourse of care for citizens while facilitating and normalising acts and processes of striation directed at exiles. Namely the places in which people may be arbitrarily subjected to identity checks has been extended from within stations at the border to areas within 20km of these stations, undoubtedly normalising and effectively legalising racial profiling (La Cimade 2017). This further enforces invisibility and criminalises migrant populations as a whole, legitimising attacks on their spaces of life and the enforced containment of their bodies.

Performative policing

The police are extremely visible in Calais, performing the humanitarian discourse of “zero-camp tolerance”. As well as being numerous they stand out in the way that they navigate the city: in imposing vehicles and visibly armed. They seem to be omnipresent, both in areas inhabited by exiles and in the city, generating a constant sense of threat and surveillance. Cousin & Legros ask, “what is being governed exactly through the struggle against ‘illicit encampments’?” observing that the practice usually just generates new encampments nearby (2014, 1263). The rationale for the futile process of disassembling the camp is made clearer in their response to it: Cousin and Legros consider it to be a performance of the power of the state for the general public, a reminder of the predominant ideology (2014, 1282). Fassin considers the three pillars of governmentality to be the economy, police and humanitarianism, explaining that over the past decades policing has become the main instrument for governing those considered alien (2011, 221). He considers the government of immigration to reveal the limitations of an “ideal-typical representation [of the state] as coherent, impartial and effective”, revealing its flaws, partiality and dysfunctionalities as a result (ibid, 217). Handling immigration is an event which paradoxically leads the state to evade its own laws or carry out illegal acts, rendering the line between legitimate and illegitimate acts against exiles ever more blurred (ibid, 217). Fassin interprets policing as a form of spectacle offered to the political right and far right (ibid, 220). This rings true in the case under study, where the police are the most visible actors involved in policing non-camp settlers. It calls for attention to both formal and informal policing practices – within and beyond the law.

Disassembling the camp : the politics of policing exiles in Calais, France