Transnational refugees are pilgrims in their own right, seeking a destination where they hope to find shelter from the hardships they have endured. As much as refugees may prefer a swift and safe transit, displacement always exposes them to constant insecurity. In pursuit of their destinations, refugees often risk starvation, disease, and violent exclusion. The prospect of becoming stranded in a place that is neither home nor their intended refuge is an unbearable fate.
The Calais ‘Jungle’, once Europe’s most prominent refugee shantytown, embodied the shared despair of transnationally displaced refugees. Anthropologist Michel Agier and his team produced a thorough ethnography of the socio-historical evolution of the encampment and its shifting residential demography in 2018. Their research revealed that dating back to the late 1990s, refugees seeking asylum in the UK or France were already stuck in Calais – the chokepoint where the two countries are contiguous both territorially and jurisdictionally. The borderland soon became a buffer zone, hosting rejected asylum seekers barred from legitimate status. Checkpoints were enforced on the French side by way of the ratification of a bilateral Sangatte Protocol (1991) and the following Treaty of Touquet (2003) with Britain. As Oli Mould contends, quoting Doreen Massey, the formation of the slum-like ‘jungle’ was also an extended frontier of the neoliberal decision-making and city-making of a globalised London. Similarly, as Professor Dan Hicks and Dr Sarah Mallet write in their study of the Calais ‘Jungle’s’ material culture, the encampment was reduced to a ‘nonplace’ of poverty and poor hygiene conditions, shaped by the systemic power structure that weaponized the landscape to discipline and control refugee lives.
Refugees in Calais were initially housed in a large, suspended hangar known as the ‘Sangatte hangar’. This hangar served as a temporary shelter before the implementation of the 2003 Treaty and the subsequent establishment of the ‘Jungle’. It was not until the establishment of the official Jules Ferry Centre in conjunction with the development of an existing shantytown aided by local and international humanitarian organisations in late 2014, that the Calais ‘Jungle’ took its stable form and became widely known across Europe. According to Agier’s statistics and several reports from Refugee Rights Europe, the congregation of formal and informal settlements at one point housed around 10,000 people from over 14 conflict-stricken countries – 10% among whom were underage and mostly unaccompanied. The composite township stopped in 2016 however, with the informal camps and settlements meeting a bleak end: total demolition.
Over the lifespan of the Calais ‘Jungle’, refugees invariably practised a seemingly simplistic living strategy. Oli Mould describes this process as “a continuous cycle of homemaking, un-making and re-making in response to their precarious conditions.’ Refugees manifested their nostalgia and reaffirmed their identity through homemaking amidst material precarity, diasporic anxiety, and hostile surroundings. The resources they appropriated were often photos preserving individual memories or decorations symbolising their cultural origins. Here, a degree of reminiscence and distinctiveness emerged in the respective domestic settings of the refugees.
The act of homemaking in the ‘Jungle’ was not just about individual shelters, however, but the forging of a collective neighbourhood that extended beyond one’s physical space and household relations. As observed by Hendriks, Vrebos and De Zwart, the frequent change in the ‘Jungle’s’ demography stimulated not only the auto-construction of buildings emulating ordinate urban forms but, more importantly, catalysed a volatile morph of social networks and, accordingly, social spaces. These social networks – where familiar activities were performed almost instinctively – fostered both a sense of spontaneity and collective subjectivity among ‘Jungle’ dwellers, who, in turn, shaped and redefined the space through their presence.
The economic participation of refugees in Calais sheds further light on the homemaking process. In particular, documentaries and ethnographic literature on the ‘Jungle’ spotlight the importance of grocery stores and regionally inspired restaurants in fostering a sense of culture and community. These places of social gathering were mostly established along the main street, Rue des Garennes, and the north-south axis, Chemin des Dunes. Landmarks with names like ‘Kaboul Restaurants’ and ‘Salam Bar’ not only offered authentic foods from refugees’ home countries but also allowed residents to affirm their identity through shared consumption. In addition to nostalgic culinary spaces, there were also self-employed artisans and barbers providing services under their shelters. Caravans, camp materials, housing ownership, contraband and crossing opportunities were all tradeable in the ‘Jungle’s’ informal market. Refugees actively and regularly engaged in an informal economy in Calais, building institutions ingrained in tradition and self-entrepreneurship.
Alongside participating economically, ‘Jungle’ dwellers also committed much of their time to routine cultural activities – allowing them to reconcile their alienation through reimagining the meaning of ‘place’. Residents built the Tioxide mosque and the Coptic Ethiopian Orthodox Church for daily worship of different beliefs. Similarly, with volunteer and financial assistance from local humanitarian organisations, minors attended classes at education facilities represented by the École Laïque and École du Darfour. The continuation of communal homemaking wasn’t restricted to disciplining structures like religious and education sites, however. The football field in the town centre was frequented by young residents and occupied most of the time. WIFI connection was viable at certain art workshops, and a daily red truck carrying an aerial transmitter and game tables provided additional access to leisure activities. These forms of entertainment helped refugees normalize the shantytown’s social landscape – momentarily easing broader collective and individual anxieties.
These socialisation mechanisms in the ‘Jungle’ provided refugees – many of whom suffered from traumatic experiences before and during displacement – a means of cultural refuge and escape. Over time, however, the cohesive imaginary of ‘Jungle living’ often came to represent an actualised vision of ‘home’, supplanting episodic and painful memories associated with refugees’ physical homelands. This proved central to the shantytown’s emergent ‘urbanity’ – evolving from a mere settlement into a site where residents regulated neighbourhood layouts, formed political communities and actively intervened in resource allocation. In the multicultural tangle of the ‘Jungle’, ethnicity became a key organizing principle, structuring physical and political communities.
Afghans, Sudanese and other ethnic-racial groups established distinct living compounds, creating the foundation for ethno-politics. External interventions by humanitarian organisations and local authorities further necessitated an ethnic representation system to facilitate multi-party consultation and information circulation. Community leaders routinely communicated with external actors regarding the distribution of handouts and information on police deployment. Through this interplay of informational and distributional authority, a functional political institution was installed rooted in the spatial and cultural fabric of the shantytown.
Nevertheless, while it may have resulted in a more structured social order, institutionalised political life added to the already unequal social hierarchy that existed within the ‘Jungle’. This, coupled with stories of successful crossings, reinforced the stark disparity in resource access among refugees, serving as a constant reminder to ‘Jungle’ residents of an unreachable ‘non-Jungle’ life. Even from the refugees’ perspective, insomuch as the intermediary ‘Jungle’ affirmed their subjectivity and pacified their traumas, there was an acknowledgement that this temporary home was doomed to collapse with or without demolition authorised by the French government. After all, the ‘Jungle’s’ landscape was a fragile imitation of home, unable to bear the weight of the enduring stability that defines true belonging.
The fragility of the refugees’ homemaking then stemmed primarily from the physical immobility of their shelter. Even as emotional ties to the ‘Jungle’ strengthened through the practices of everyday life, refugees often prioritized carrying portable mementoes like family photos and personal artefacts when crossing checkpoints, over and above material decorations commonplace within their temporary homes. The immobile shelters they built for consolation were secondary to their deeper connection to home and identity, embodied by the personal belongings they carried. These temporary dwellings, lacking the emotional resonance of what they had left behind, became expendable in the face of refugees’ determination to move forward.
In this vein, the immobile physical structures of the ‘Jungle’ acted more as vessels for idealised nostalgic linkages, rather than as generators of a sense of belonging intrinsic to life in the shantytown. Despite residents’ efforts to reconcile with their experience of displacement, constant reminders such as the deaths of former ‘Jungle’ residents on Calais’ shores, shattered positive imaginings of their forged home – forcing them to confront the brutal reality of their precarious existence.
Beyond its physical immobility and fragility, the environment surrounding the ‘Jungle’ also reinforced its transience. This was heightened by an overwhelming presence of humanitarian organisations in the region and the looming presence of containers designated for relocation. Humanitarian dispatches dominated not only the physical landscape of the ‘Jungle’ but also shaped the daily rhythm of its residents’ lives. Majority of refugees spent their daylight hours queuing for subsistence and conforming to the operational schedules of humanitarian organisations. While residents tacitly observed these well-intentioned yet unconsidered practices, the imposition of government-installed containers starkly negated their agency and denied them from creating their own spaces.
Ticktin argues that the container settlements beside the ‘Jungle’– marked by biometric counting, rigid surveillance and modular housing – reduced relocated refugees to subjects of institutional control. Refugees confined to these containers found themselves bereft of autonomy over their own environment – namely because inspections precluded the possibilities of homemaking. Their ‘homes’ were transposed upon them, in the same way their desire to cross the Franco-British border was constricted by state power. Ultimately, the agency manifest in refugees’ social spaces was thus dictated by imposed ordering, either implicitly or by design. A social space governed by such regulations cannot cultivate the sense of belonging necessary to create a sustainable home.
The homemaking process for refugees in Calais was thus bounded by rigid institutional structures, leaving residents unable to obtain true autonomy over their daily lives. Despite the celebration of everyday resistance spotlighted by the international media, literature and theatrical performances, external portrayals of the “Jungle” often amplified the role of governmental policies as the central force shaping its spatial layouts. Nationalist and populist-driven groups further disrupted the homemaking process, misconstruing both the root causes of displacement and the agency of the displaced. In these narratives, the ‘Jungle’ was reduced to a symbol of unruly chaos; portrayed not as a site of lived experience but as proof of refugee passivity and dehumanization. By depicting the shantytown as a dangerous tropical jungle and its residents as bare lives, public discourse effaced refugees’ efforts to create meaningful homes in Calais and rendered their resistance powerless.
Today, liberal multiculturalism is faltering in the face of an increasing wave of refugees – exclusionary populism only escalating cycles of violence and animosity. Nevertheless, the resilience of refugees in Calais – expressed through their efforts to carve out spaces of memory, survival, and resistance – stands as a powerful example of just defiance against systemic expulsion and violence. Here, as Henri Lefebvre reminds us, the displaced and dispossessed can actively pursue their “right to the city” – fostering identity, justice and dignity through spatial practices. Homemaking in Calais was thus never about building a shantytown; it was an act of everyday resistance – a fight for autonomy and agency. Inasmuch, the struggle of ‘Jungle’ residents is a testament to shared values of mankind – foremost among which is an unyielding desire to belong.