Grandstand. For several decades, men, women and children from Eastern Europe, East Africa, the Middle East and South-East Asia, all seeking protection, survive on the coast of the English Channel and the North Sea. Most of these exiled people present on our coasts have only one objective: to cross – by all means – the border which stands in front of them and which prevents them from reaching the United Kingdom.
Nineteen years ago, on February 4, 2003, following the closure of the Sangatte center and in the extension of the Treaty of Canterbury of February 12, 1986, France and the United Kingdom signed the Treaty of Le Touquet. The British border is outsourced to French soil with funding from Great Britain. France becomes the “police arm” of the United Kingdom’s migration policy to prevent exiles from crossing the Channel.
Evictions, confiscations
On the French coasts, the authorities are implementing a policy of fighting against the presence of exiled people and making them invisible. The daily mistreatments that it involves are numerous: eviction from living places, confiscation of belongings, remaining on the street in the absence of services to cover their basic needs, obstruction of the action of associations, etc.
This policy is not only outrageous and unacceptable, it is also deadly: at least 342 people have lost their lives on the Franco-British border since 1999, including 36 in 2021. The continuation year after year of this inhumane policy, the repetition of these mistreatments and these tragedies could push us to fatalism. On the contrary, we act for the improvement of the situation, for the respect of the rights and the life of people in exile.
It is in this spirit that the Migrant Support Platform (PSM), of which we are members or which we support, asked anthropologist Marta Lotto (“On The Border, life in transit at the Franco-British border”) and political scientist Pierre Bonnevalle (“Survey on thirty years of fabricating policy of deterrence: the French State and the management of the presence of exiled people on the Franco-British border. Harassment, expulsion, dispersal”) to investigate, for one, the living conditions of people in transit and, for the other, on the management by the French authorities of the presence of exiled people at the border [présentation des deux rapports le 4 février, à l’université du Littoral-Côte d’Opale (ULCO), à Dunkerque].
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