Where Europe’s Migrants Wait
By Sara Prestianni
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A young man sits at the entrance of the so-called Jungle of Calais in December 2015. Calais is the largest informal encampment in France, a temporary home to more than 10,000 people. © Sara Prestianni -
Tents and makeshift shelters cover the ground at the Jungle of Calais in December 2015. The government of France has begun clearing the camp and dispersing its thousands of residents to temporary housing all over France. © Sara Prestianni -
Two men make their way through the mud in Grande-Synthe in December 2015. After the Jungle of Calais, Grande-Synthe is one of the largest informal migrant encampments in Europe, where over 3,000 migrants—including hundreds of children—wait to enter the UK. © Sara Prestianni -
A woman walks past tents and muddy furniture in France’s Grande-Synthe encampment in December 2015. © Sara Prestianni -
Sudanese migrants maintain the rhythms of daily life in the informal Italian encampment of Ventimiglia in August 2016. The closure of the border between Italy and France forced migrants to travel through the mountains that separate the two countries. © Sara Prestianni -
In Souda Vista, an informal encampment on the Greek island of Chios, rows of refugee agency tents stand next to a fortress wall in August 2016. Since a migration agreement was signed in March between the European Union and Turkey, the Greek Aegean islands have become a place of limbo for migrants who arrived after this date. © Sara Prestianni -
A Syrian woman sits with her child in the Port of Piraeus in March 2016. Like Idomeni, this encampment was a result of the closure of the Greek–Macedonian border. Greek authorities began vacating the encampment in July 2016. © Sara Prestianni -
A woman walks among the tents of the Port of Piraeus encampment in Athens in March 2016. Despite its inhumane living conditions, many migrants chose to stay here hoping that they would eventually be allowed to move onward to official camps. © Sara Prestianni -
Residents of Greece’s Idomeni encampment socialize on the night before their eviction in May 2016. Formed in November 2015 after the border between Greece and Macedonia was closed, the encampment reached its peak of 12,000 residents at the beginning of 2016. © Sara Prestianni
Informal encampments for transiting migrants are sprouting all over Europe, from the outposts of Calais, Idomeni, Chios, and Lesbos, to the capital cities of Rome, Athens, and Paris. Manifesting as patchworks of tent cities and makeshift shelters in repurposed buildings, these encampments throw into sharp relief the consequences of Europe’s reception- and border-management policies.
France’s so-called “Jungle of Calais” is perhaps the most visible example of this. A sprawling encampment near Calais that first appeared in 2002, it has been razed a dozen times by the French and British authorities. This week, mass evacuations began there yet again, as thousands of migrants were boarded onto buses that will disperse them to temporary shelters all over France.
Again and again, this scene has played out as the camp regenerates, only to be cleared out once more. The Jungle of Calais is a startling symbol of the failed migration policies that have left countless migrants vulnerable and adrift. Clearing out the camp has only forced its inhabitants further down the coast, leading to the creation of other “jungles” like Grande-Synthe, Norrent-Fontes, and Angres.
All over Europe, these encampments swell and disperse as migrants are displaced. The Idomeni camp, at the border of Greece and Macedonia, ballooned in November 2015 to become the largest camp in Europe when authorities attempted to close a route to Germany. And in March, the camps of Souda and Dipethe on the Greek island of Chios took in 2,000 migrants after they were left in limbo by a deal between the European Union and Turkey.
For many migrants, life is on hold in these camps as they wait for a new shipment of humanitarian aid, for their next attempt to cross a border, for the latest shift in migration policy. The photography above explores these places and the lives of the people within them—their hospitality, their warmth, and their dignity despite the most precarious of circumstances.
The author is a grantee of the Open Society Foundations for her research on migration.
Sara Prestianni is an expert on European migration policies and is also a photographer.
