“We need stronger European cooperation in this area. “ In the aftermath of the sinking which left at least 27 dead among migrants trying to cross the Channel aboard a boat, off Calais (Pas-de-Calais), Wednesday November 24, Emmanuel Macron called on Thursday for better cooperation with Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and the UK to better fight smugglers “who use distress”.
This drama reminds us that the migration issue in this part of Europe is not new. “It has been more than twenty years that there are migrants in Calais “, says Virginie Guiraudon, research director at the CNRS at the center for European studies, attached to SciencesPo Paris. Franceinfo interviewed her to try to understand why France and the United Kingdom are shifting responsibility on this issue.
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Franceinfo: The drama that occurred Wednesday in the Channel is not the first?
Virginie Guiraudon: No, but it is the most important on this sea. We must not forget that the cemetery of Europe is located in the Mediterranean. However, there have already been larger tragedies of people dying in lorries trying to get to the UK. In June 2000, 58 Chinese migrants were found dead in a refrigerated truck in Dover. Wednesday’s drama was predictable, smugglers have been trying to get people to the UK for over twenty years. But if we look at the official figures, departures have been much higher for two years. There are two contextual factors: controls were reinforced at the port of Calais then the Covid-19, as well as the containment, slowed down the traffic [entre les deux pays]. It was therefore more difficult to go unnoticed when getting into a truck, hence the idea of going by sea.
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Who is responsible for this tragedy?
France and the United Kingdom are passing the buck. Gérald Darmanin, the Minister of the Interior, also transfers the responsibility to other European countries, accusing countries further east or south. He says that if people arrive in Calais, it is because there are not enough upstream checks. This calls into question Schengen. Everyone tries not to take responsibility.
“The United Kingdom, demagogically, even populist under the government of Boris Johnson, through the tabloid press, blames France for not controlling the borders enough.”
Virginie Guiraudon, research director at CNRSto franceinfo
Under the Touquet accords, signed in 2003, France agreed to control the British border. Emmanuel Macron had promised to denounce these agreements, but there is no one at the Elysee who follows the migration issue. It is not one of its priorities, although it is continually in the news.
How do these two countries, France and the United Kingdom, intervene for this kind of rescue operation?
There are 30 km between Calais and Dover, so no international waters. These are French or British territorial waters. For the rescue, each country has an area for which it is responsible, it is then up to it to help. But there have been cases where people have called for help in the UK who said it was not for them to intervene, but for the French. There are sometimes games, a little macabre, of sovereignty over who is supposed to intervene. For the recent drama it’s hard to answer, I don’t know exactly where the boat was located.
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Why do these migrants want at all costs to join the United Kingdom?
Initially, these migrants have links with this country that attracts them: language, family, communities. An idea also remained anchored, even if it is less relevant: the one which suggested that it was much easier in a liberal economy to find work. Since 2015 and the ‘migrant crisis’, we have observed something new: today we find people in Calais who have arrived for years, after a chaotic journey. They end up there after being rejected in other countries. The UK is no longer a choice, but a last possibility. This phenomenon is called secondary migration.
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Why don’t they want to stay in France? You have to see the way it goes here. These migrants do not really know where they are going to be sent, without being able to work until they obtain a status. Every day, the camps in Calais are dismantled, we are completely safe. Staying there doesn’t really make sense.
The control of a port or a station is possible, but that of a coast, more extensive, much more complicated …
Yes, for two reasons. There are a lot of boats leaving at the same time, it can be 10 or 20. Some will get there, others will be rescued, others will be spotted. Then, from the moment a place is particularly controlled, such as Calais, departures spread over the entire coast, from the Bay of Somme to Normandy.
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Emmanuel Macron declared that he wanted “European cooperation” against smugglers, but how to fight against this system, which is sometimes very lucrative?
The ferryman only exists because it is difficult to pass. There are several types of smugglers. There are local, almost artisanal initiatives. But as it has become very lucrative – some Chinese migrants who come to the United Kingdom can pay up to 30,000 euros – we are almost in crime. There are both in Calais. Few means are implemented for the dismantling of this sector. There are a lot of police, coast guards, border guards, but it is not their responsibility. Fighting people smugglers is really an international investigative task, because we are dealing with very sophisticated networks.
“Putting in more police officers will just drive up the prices of the passage because it will be even more difficult to find a place without surveillance.”
Virginie Guiraudon, research director at CNRSto franceinfo
How can the European Union influence this issue?
In matters of immigration and asylum, European policy is essentially based on the control of external borders. The UK is not really cooperating on these issues. An example: in 2016, we dismantled the “Calais Jungle”, where there were more than 700 unaccompanied minors who had family in the United Kingdom. During negotiations, London said the files would be studied. But of these 700 young migrants, less than 20 have crossed the Channel. This problem will clearly be on the agenda of the French presidency of the European Union, which begins on January 1, 2022.
Can this problem be fixed?
People have been in Calais for over twenty years, but for over twenty years we have been blaming someone else. This problem has essentially been tackled with a strengthening of human and technological resources. It starts from a poor analysis of what migration is and why. Migrants are a bit reified in this story. If we don’t understand why people are there and why they are trying to cross, it’s difficult to come up with a solution.
Are we not immune to other dramas like this?
We are entering a winter period, so it will not necessarily be capsizes, but people can die of hypothermia. There will be deaths, I don’t see how we could prevent it.