"All you need is Calais", titled the local newspaper Le Nord Littoral in May 2016. An ongoing project aiming at documenting the everyday life in my hometown. Although remaining high in the media agenda, the life of the city is often overlooked. I am trying to depict the broader picture: a middle size city in northern France, an harbour and a border town, soon to be an EU border. A place which lived 200 years of British rules and 37 years of municipal communism. A society which underwent a harsh deindustrialization – after having once been the proud world capital of the mechanic lace production, its consequent economic and social hardships, and the rise of the Front National. An area where candidates for asylum in the UK transit for more than 20 years, base for a humanitarian crisis, and leading to a slow-paced but certain growing diversity.
