Since mid-March, 1,600 people, evacuated from migrant camps or squats in Paris, have been directed to “temporary regional reception areas”, far from the capital. The associations denounce a strategy of distancing, as the Olympic Games approach. franceinfo investigated this system and went to one of these reception centers in Bordeaux.
Is the State really clearing out the streets of Paris before the Olympic Games? This is what certain associations denounce, while 1,600 migrants have been directed to other French regions since mid-March and the implementation of this system launched just six months ago.
Since April, each time the State evacuates a camp or squat in the Paris region, buses leave for other French cities. Tuesday September 12, at the Stalingrad metro station, 6 a.m.: several hundred migrants are evacuated and those who wish can go to Bordeaux or Marseille. A volunteer from France Terre d’Asile who speaks Afghan explains it on a megaphone. An official from the prefecture ensures that everyone is indeed a volunteer. Everything is happening very quickly. In half an hour, the two buses are full of single men who leave with a small backpack, without really knowing what to expect. Pierre Alauzy is coordinator at Médecins du monde: “In truth, it’s not much better than writing off favelas in Brazil before the Olympics, than freeing precarious people in London or Moscow. We are convinced that this system was created for the Olympics and that the goal is to get as many people considered undesirable by the State out of Paris as possible and send them to the regions.”
“A choice that we offer them,” assures the ministry
In ten regions, all except Île-de-France, Hauts-de-France and Corsica, there are “regional temporary reception areas”. It is the Ministry of Housing which communicates on this subject. This device is not “clearly not linked to the Olympics”, assures Georges Bos, director of the migrants and refugees center at the Interministerial Delegation for Accommodation and Housing. Explains to him that the living conditions in these Ile-de-France squats are unworthy and that the government simply wants to give these foreigners more opportunities. “The objective is indeed that they can build a life in Bordeaux or Marseille, that is to say where they were sent. This is also a choice that we offer them. Finally, they can submit a file. Finally, they are accommodated, while they leave Paris where they were on the street.”
In total, according to our information, 1,600 people have been evacuated over the last six months from Paris to go to these “regional airlocks”. We have these migrants evacuated from Paris to the Bordeaux airlock. Fifty people come here every month, in a former college. They stay for three weeks maximum, free to come and go. They live and sleep in classrooms converted into dormitories. “I wanted to live here to look for work and find accommodation, explains a young migrant. In Paris, there is no solution. In Paris, there are no helpers, social workers, because there are a lot of people there.”
Six social workers work here, like Julie Trouvé, who tries to help these migrants who are undocumented, asylum seekers or who have already obtained refugee status. “They are there for three weeks and, as a result, during these three weeks, we will be able to take care of each of the people, whereas in Paris, many do not see social workers, they are left to their own devices. We “We have time, that’s what we’re here for, and with them. We try our best, even if there are situations that we can’t resolve.”
Saturated reception capacities
At the end of these three weeks, some of these migrants go to centers for asylum seekers, others, very few, find accommodation. In fact, two points are problematic. First, a large part evaporates, does not remain in the system: 40% in Bordeaux leave without us knowing what becomes of them. It’s 20% nationally. People who, according to the prefecture and associations, most certainly return to Paris where they have knowledge and opportunities for undeclared work. The other problem that local elected officials raise is that more than half of these migrants, once they have left the airlock, find themselves in emergency accommodation centers, in already saturated cities. Harmonie Lecerf-Meunier is an environmental assistant at Bordeaux town hall, in charge of solidarity. “In Bordeaux, we are saturated, over-saturated… Associations carried out a study with a bailiff: for several days, several weeks, they monitored the marauding with a bailiff. With each call from 115, they had 100% answer: ‘We don’t have any places’. We have families on the street, we have children on the street, we have shanty towns, squats. In any case, in Bordeaux, we cannot accommodate more than people.”
All these cities concerned, just like the associations, are in favor of territorial solidarity. But they are asking the government to create emergency accommodation places, at the risk of moving a problem from Paris to other French cities.