In the documentary “Les Plages de l’entreprises”, broadcast in “Envoyé Spécial” on France 2, journalist Julien Goudichaud shows the mafia-like workings of the passage of candidates for exile by sea to British soil.
Nominated for the Prix-Albert-Londres this year for his book Boarding Beaches published by les Arènes, the journalist Julien Goudichaud offers, Thursday November 2 at 9:10 p.m. in “Envoyéspecial” on France 2, the documentary version of his work. It begins on the beaches of Boulogne-sur-Mer, 30 kilometers from Calais. We see 50 migrants, their feet in the water, getting into a four-meter-long inflatable Zodiac boat, designed for half as many people. Standing on the edges of the boat, men unceremoniously reject some who will have to wait for the next Zodiac.
franceinfo: You spent seven years exploring this region to meet migrants, touts and smugglers. How was this desire to tell this story born?
Julien Goudichaud: I went to Pas-de-Calais in 2015, somewhat by chance and out of curiosity, to discover this Franco-British border. I was completely taken aback when I found out what was going on there. I saw men in their twenties climbing four meter high barriers to catch a moving train, before rushing into a tunnel to arrive in England. And I don’t think I ever managed to get rid of this area. I knew that one day the sea passages would be used and when I saw the phenomenon appearing, I stayed.
At the time, migrants took trucks and then, in the space of five years, we went from 450 to 45,000 people trying, for example last year, to cross to England using boats. Why this explosion?
It started with groups of Iranians buying boats on the Internet. They clubbed together and bought small second-hand boats with a motor. It was very difficult to raise the funds and bring back the equipment. And then the first boats passed.
“And when the first boats passed, the idea that it was possible germinated and it was an explosion. Everyone only wanted to try the sea passage”
Julien Goudichaud, journalistat franceinfo
From there, the mafias looked into it and a business was born.
You’re talking about the mafia. Tell us about these different layers from the order giver who is probably not in France to these men who are standing on the edges of the boat?
It’s very pyramidal and hierarchical. There are the little hands who are recruited in the camps and who work themselves to be able to have free passage to England. There are recruiters of passengers who are also migrants or people a little bit removed from the camp and finally order givers, probably based abroad. Each beach in Pas-de-Calais is guarded by a clan which has a pyramid structure. There are territorial wars to keep a beach, Wimereux beach belongs to one clan, Leffrinckoucke beach to another, etc.
You also mention the taxi-boat, a method which ensures that the border police cannot intervene?
Smugglers always try to be one step ahead of the police. Today, the police stop boats that enter the water, they try to intercept these boats so that they can be punctured and put out of service. The smugglers therefore said to themselves that they would arrive by sea to pick up the migrants on the beach because the police do not have the right to puncture a boat once it is in the water. This would pose too much danger, as people could fall into the water and drown. They then prepare the boat ten kilometers or 15 kilometers away with two or three people, then the boat arrives by sea and the migrants run on the beach, enter the water and get into the boat. At this point, the police are a little crazy.
You yourself crossed to England with migrants. How long did it last?
It took us between five and six hours to reach English waters, the maritime border, not the mainland.
Your documentary ends with recent British policy almost threatening migrants with being sent back to Rwanda. Are there real consequences for the migrants you met?
It’s an aberration when we imagine that we could perhaps be sent back to Rwanda, and be parked in containers. Obviously, asylum seekers in the United Kingdom wait all day in their rooms and watch the news. When we tell them: “Maybe tomorrow you will be sent there, to Africa”, there is a fear that germinates. There is also, for some, homesickness. They can’t find their feet and they wonder if they wouldn’t be “rather safer in the European Union?” So some go the opposite way. There are even smuggling networks that have opened up to be able to bring back exiles who would like to be in the European Union.