'Lieux de vie' ('living spaces'). Calais, October 2016.
These series depicts the last moments before and during the forced eviction of the 'Jungle' refugee camp in Calais, at the end of October 2016.
For several years, exiles and volunteers had built a makeshift refugee camp in the outskirt of the town, a shanty town 'tolerated' by the authorities and the biggest of its kind, in the hart of the EU.
Living conditions were rough. Over time, people organised. Basic services were made available, a few restaurants, barber shops, mosques, a church, and other community facilities, were built by its inhabitants and the volunteers of the associations supporting them.
In October 2016, the French government decided to carry out its destruction. In just a few days, everything disappeared. On the second day of the operation, and without explanation, the camp started to burn. Shelters and once lively community spaces were reduced to ashes or later destroyed by excavators.
People were forcibly evacuated to accommodations centres scattered throughout the country. Children being the last to be taken away, hundreds of unaccompanied minors were left alone for several days, sleeping in the outside in the chaos of the still smoking ruins.
Three years later, several hundreds of people – including unaccompanied minors – are still living in the woods around Calais in little settlements. Those are forcibly evacuated every second day by police forces, further complicating the action of the few charity organisations still present on the ground, and exhausting those trying to seek shelter.
