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Space and the Migrant Camps of Calais: Space-Making at the Margins

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Media, Margins and Civic Agency

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Abstract

In 2007, UK online national newspapers began to report on a handful of tents on scrubland near the French port of Calais occupied by migrants hoping to cross the UK border. By early 2009 this makeshift space, labelled ‘the jungle’ by migrants and the newspapers, had more than 800 occupants (Rawstorne, 2009). In September 2009, the French riot police demolished the camp and dispersed its occupants (Garnham, 2009) in the expectation of deterring new migrants from heading to Calais. In spite of this militant action by the French authorities, mini-camps sprung up all along the French coastline. The newspapers were concerned that these shelters could grow into ‘mini jungles’ (Allen, 2009c), and within a year a ‘new jungle’ had emerged in a small village near Dunkirk, only to be similarly demolished by the authorities (Finan and Allen, 2010).

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Authors
  1. Anita Howarth
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  2. Yasmin Ibrahim
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. The Media School, Bournemouth University, UK

    Einar Thorsen , Daniel Jackson , Heather Savigny  & Jenny Alexander , ,  & 

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© 2015 Anita Howarth and Yasmin Ibrahim

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Howarth, A., Ibrahim, Y. (2015). Space and the Migrant Camps of Calais: Space-Making at the Margins. In: Thorsen, E., Jackson, D., Savigny, H., Alexander, J. (eds) Media, Margins and Civic Agency. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137512642_10

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