Refugee crisis requires a humanitarian response

We have been teaching a university short course on “life stories” in the Calais“Jungle”. We have not found the “economic migrants” of whom French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve speaks. Students have had traumatic experiences far exceeding those defining a “refugee”. Fluent and educated in English, they want to use those skills. Many have relatives in the UK; some are minors. A number worked for UK or US forces and were consequently attacked.

David Cameron said he “applauds” the French government’s approach to Calais (theguardian.com, 3 March). Yet France’s forceful evictions are further violations of residents’ lives. As the poet Warsan Shire put it: “No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark.” Now bulldozers are chewing up carefully constructed havens of wooden shelters and tents, bringing the sharks home again.

Students were anxious. They talked about violence from rightwing groups, children crying in their tents, and their increasing desperation to follow smugglers and get on trucks. Two young men described fleeing the Taliban. To be living in Europe, their epitome of justice, mired in mud, with no action on their rightful claims as a minor with UK family and an ex-employee of UK armed forces, and now, without shelter, was deeply depressing.

If Greece is warehousing souls, it seems France is pursuing a “demolition of souls” in the Calais camp. Britain is doing something similar administratively, by delaying and ignoring legitimate asylum claims. Mobilisation against the French evictions has been widespread, from refugees, volunteers, professionals and politicians in France and the UK. Now, UK and French governments need to recognise refugees’ legitimate desires for asylum in the country of their choice for linguistic, historical and family reasons, and to live up to their moral responsibilities.
Dr Corinne Squire
School of Social Sciences, University of East London

• Can Europe’s politicians and this government sink any lower in their response to the massive refugee crisis facing the whole of the continent, much of it driven by our interventions in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and the rest (UK deploys troops in refugee crisis, 7 March)?