A recent history of camps in French migration policy, part 2: Encampment and eviction

In the first part of this article, Karen Akoka and Aubépine Dahan argued that the distinctive landscape of camps in contemporary France is the result of public policies which have made life precarious for people seeking asylum. Barred from working by a law promulgated in 1991, asylum-seekers are instead obliged to rely on state provision of asylum support and accommodation. But this is hard to access and structurally inadequate, forcing numbers of exilés (the term used in French to avoid the problematic categories of ‘immigrant’ and ‘refugee’) onto the streets. This is a deliberate policy choice. In this second part, the authors ask what function camps—and evictions—serve for the French state.

Camps: not quite invisible 

Camps must serve as an illustration, but without becoming too large. Hence a subtle management by the state of the visibility of camps, which requires a skilful navigation between staged scenes of camps spilling out of control and being brought back to order. 

Camps have long existed in France (Roma camps, for example, or encampments in Calais since the end of the 1990s), as have informal groupings like those in the major Paris train stations the Gare de l’Est in the early 2000s and Gare d’Austerlitz in 2014. But they have only emerged in the media since summer 2015. Images of them, relayed by the media and social networks, resonate with the messages that the authorities want to convey on immigration, which differ according to the audience. To French citizens, immigration is presented as a problem by making a spectacle of migrants, not only as too numerous but also as hungry, dirty and sick. This elicits a mixture of empathy, disgust and fear. The fact that camps persist despite the evictions makes immigration appear as a bottomless well: the overflow may be skimmed off, but the flood is too great. To migrants, the message to be spread through these images is one of no welcome (“there’s no room for you”). The aim is to make those who are already in France flee, and discourage those who might wish to come. 

Yet camps must not be too visible, either, as they can foment a solidarity that might stand in the way of restrictive migration policies. When they’re in town centres, they can become places for meeting, learning, engaging and mobilising. Almost all of the solidarity networks now operating in France were born from camps in this way. Their recruitment in non-activist circles and their flexible, horizontal way of working have widely renewed and even shaken up the field of migrant support.

Camps, places where no-one a priori wants to find themselves, have in a strange reversal become an end in themselves, a way of obtaining something for displaced people and their supporters. Paradoxically, while evictions had the declared objective of making camps disappear, they have ended up turning them into a way of accessing accommodation, very often the only one.

For exiles and activists, making a camp ‘stick’ has therefore become strategic. It not only offers an immediate though precarious solution, but also allows the situation of exilés to be made visible, and a more lasting solution to be brought about. It is now not only the camp but also its visibility that has become a resource for exilés and activists. And in return, it is very much the fight against this visibility that has become an issue for public authorities. 

Hence the ambivalence of the state’s treatment of camps: allowing them to form as long as they remain small and scarcely visible; removing them, but never completely; tolerating them, but not just anywhere. Especially not at the centre, in Paris: since 2016, the policy of the police headquarters in the capital, supported by the municipality, consists of pushing camps to the periphery, then beyond the city. The police’s instructions to exilés are unambiguous: if you hope to put your bedding down somewhere, you have to leave Paris. 

Camps return to the spotlight, though, at the moment of eviction. And eviction is staged as a spectacle.

Evictions: the spectacle, and what follows

Evictions are as much an exercise of public relations as of public order. They are the moment when the state makes a show of its responsibility, its firmness, and also its humanity. The state must show a subtle mix of two aspects: no, it isn’t soft on immigration, but yes, it does respect republican and humanist values. It must also make the inhabitants of the camps, and the media, believe that everyone will be given shelter—while having prepared an insufficient number of places. Hence the two stages of each eviction: the visible one, a centre-stage spectacle under the spotlight, in the presence of numerous actors; then, when these actors have left, the follow-up, behind the scenes where violence can be deployed unwitnessed. After 66 evictions in Paris, it is possible to identify a ritual followed to the letter. The same actions are repeated, precisely and meticulously, almost without variation. 

First, the date: a false mystery is skilfully maintained around the day of the eviction. Certain actors, the accommodation centres but also journalists, must know the date. Others, support organisations and exilés, must be kept in the dark to reduce the risk of last-minute assembling in the camp. Solidarity organizations will nevertheless be first at the scene in the early morning to distribute hot drinks and information, try and recover possessions, and monitor the behaviour of the police. 

The actual operations begin at 5am with the encirclement of the camp by heavily equipped police officers; the prefect arrives, opening the press conference which is attended by journalists, elected officials and the state-funded asylum support provider France Terre d’Asile. The prefect declares that it is necessary to fight against the ‘points de fixation’ (settlement sites) that camps represent because they are dangerous “for migrants as well as residents”, and announces that enough places have been made available to accommodate everyone, that this is the last eviction, and that the camp will not re-form. Journalists relay the number of places made available and interview one exilé and one activist. 

The exilés board the buses after being searched one by one, while their tents, sleeping bags and other belongings are destroyed. The supporters take advantage of the window of media attention to unfurl a banner, intended to be photographed and circulated on social networks.

When the journalists and elected officials are long gone, it transpires that there aren’t enough places. And so begins the second part of the eviction. Sheltering takes on a different meaning: it means sheltering the public gaze from those who remain on the street. Police officers, left alone to face this planned shortfall, and having been ordered to make the camp disappear, dip into their repertoire of verbal and physical violence, truncheon blows, kicks, and tear gas, to chase people to an undefined elsewhere. The exilés, and their supporters still present, try to make all this visible through photos and films on social media. 

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Like ‘fake unaccompanied minors’ and ‘foreigners who come here to… [live off benefits, get free healthcare, cheat the asylum system]’, camps and evictions figure centrally in the media narrative of migration. But they represent only a very small part of its reality, and they tell us less about that than they do about our political choices. Just as much as it tells one story, this media narrative silences another.

Camps and evictions portray immigration as a problem, and foreigners as too numerous and too costly to be properly welcomed. Consequently, the migration policy horizon is restricted to a single question: how to reduce the number of arrivals and avoid the ‘pull factors’? Told in this way, the story makes it impossible to take the step back that is needed for a nuanced understanding of migration. It directs all the resources towards ‘no-welcome’, control, and repression, and redirects them away from investment in welcoming, training, integration, and all the other tools that could allow foreigners to build their place in French society. 

This narrative leaves in the shadows the story of a state which condemns new arrivals to poverty by depriving them of the right to work, offering instead a reception system that is structurally too small and increasingly inaccessible. It makes it possible to continue ignoring the research which for over 30 years has shown almost unanimously that immigration is very far from constituting an economic, social or demographic problem.

Camps are part of a migration policy repertoire, not the consequence of an excess. They endure today because they are not only the result of but also the justification for restrictive migration policies. Research and grassroots practices alike go against the camps and dead ends that today serve us for policy. Enlivened by the emergence in 2015 of an unprecedented solidarity movement, they invent alternatives and map out perspectives where immigration is neither a ‘problem’ nor a solution, but really whatever we make of it.

This is the second part of an article that originally appeared in French at AOC—you can read the first part here. The translation was done by Juliette Frontier and edited by Benjamin Thomas White.

The header image shows gendarmes involved in a camp eviction in the region of Calais. On a road in an industrial area, several vans, cars, and a truck belonging to the gendarmerie are parked, with policemen standing around them—one, a mask over his face, staring at the camera. At left, bare-branched trees cloaked in ivy reach into a blue winter sky; at right, gulls circle over wasteland. The photo was kindly provided by Maria Hagan, whose research you can read about here.