“Police management cannot be the only answer to the different migratory situations”, estimates the geographer Olivier Clochard, and member of the Migreurop network, Wednesday December 1 on franceinfo. With 200 other academics, he signs a forum in The world in which is written that “it is the states that kill at the borders of Europe”. At least 27 people died Wednesday, November 24 in the sinking of their boat in the English Channel. “When controls are tightened, people take other routes, explains Olivier Clochard. What happened in Calais was foretold. “
TRIBUNE >> Drowning of migrants in the Channel: associations call on the French authorities to “change their policy”
franceinfo: For you, the Europeans do not take their responsibilities?
Olivier Clochard: For twenty years, the various studies made by my peers or myself have shown that when controls are tightened, people take other paths. What happened last week in Calais shows it. People have no other way out than to borrow these small boats to reach England.
“It was an announced tragedy. There had already been several alerts made by associations, researchers, and NGOs in relation to these crossings which have been taking place for more than two years now. Nothing has been done.”
Olivier Clochard, geographerto franceinfo
The only answer is a police response. However, we can clearly see the limits of this police management of immigration since it does not produce its effects. The death toll keeps piling up over the years.
Do we need to change the system?
Partly yes. Police management cannot be the only answer to these different migratory situations, whether in Calais, Lesbos or in the south of Italy or in the Strait of Gibraltar. The reception and processing of the files of people who come to our borders must be carried out by legal or social services, but the police response does not produce its effects otherwise people could no longer cross the borders … is not the case, so it would be good to think of something else, which the government is absolutely not ready to do in view of the answers which have been given by the Minister of the Interior.
The plane of the European border agency Frontex deployed over the English Channel is not the right answer either, in your opinion?
These are quite significant costs in terms of migratory surveillance. In particular, we asked the Minister of the Interior in 2015, Bernard Cazeneuve, to at least try to have an estimate of the cost that this border control represented and we have not had an answer to date. It is a real shame because that would make it possible to see the costs generated by these various measures and we would clearly see that other much less costly and more humane responses could be proposed.