The tent dwellers are asylum seekers hoping to travel by dinghy across the Channel to the UK. Most on this site only arrived in Calais in the past week or two and none expect to be staying long.
Calais's hostile street architecture is the result of an agreement under which the UK has paid the French government hundreds of millions of pounds to deter those who come here from the world's conflict zones.
Crossing the Channel by small boat is a life-threatening undertaking. Sunday 24 November marked the third anniversary of the worst mass drowning in the Channel since small-boat crossings began at scale in 2018.
2024 has been the deadliest year since these crossings began. Everyone on this stretch of coast knows that crossing the Channel by small boat is perilous.
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