The French state skilfully navigates between staged scenes of camps spilling out of control and being brought back to order. Media visibility of camps circulates a message to the French public that immigration is excessive (and migrants are hungry, dirty, and sick)—and to migrants that they are not welcome. But if camps are too prominent they can become sites of solidarity. Camp evictions, meanwhile, are public relations exercises that follow a well-established script: emptying and destruction of the camp under the gaze of the media, promise that residents will be accommodated elsewhere; then (once the journalists have departed) ‘realization’ that the available accommodation is insufficient, followed by violent dispersal of remaining camp residents. This narrative disguises the state’s responsibility for the situation and reduces the horizon of migration policy to a single question: how to reduce numbers. It directs resources towards repression instead of integration.