Oceane Theard
modified to
11:38 a.m., March 27, 2022
After a month of conflict, many Ukrainians have found refuge in France. Some have arrived in Paris and are temporarily accommodated in one of the halls of the exhibition center at Porte de Versailles. A first crossing point before being sent to the four corners of the country to be accommodated.
It has now been a month since the war in Ukraine began and more than 26,000 Ukrainian refugees have arrived in France. Eventually, nearly 100,000 refugees are expected by the government. To welcome them, a huge reception center has been set up at Porte de Versailles in Paris. One and the same place to receive temporary papers, to be redirected to accommodation in the provinces. It’s a one-stop shop for organizing this wave of arrival, a large hangar of 5,000 m2 which allows you to organize life after.
Families then sent to the provinces
From one counter to another, 300 refugees collect a temporary residence permit every day, a payment card on which we can hear: “You know you are going to be sent outside Paris Normandy Brittany.”
And to get there, buses leave from here for all of France. But you have to wait. Olga and her son Dimitri, same blue and sad look, arrive from western Ukraine: “The bombs started falling near our house. We did not think that war would come in the west. We are immediately left, my husband stayed to fight.”
Housing and then work
Olga abruptly interrupts. Their bus is announced, in two hours, they will be in Loué in the Sarthe.
“To my knowledge, there has not been a mobilization of such magnitude in the history of asylum in France since the Second World War”, explains Hélène Soupios-David, of the association France Terre D’ Asylum that accompanies these waves of refugees, “there we manage the emergency and the beginning and now we are also preparing”. It will then be necessary to find them a job, a school, to continue to live as long as the war lasts.