The Channel Crossing paradox: how the ever-increasing securitization of the UK-France border, fails to protect migrants’ lives and rights

2024 was a year of numbers. With the UEFA European Championship, the Paris Olympics, the European elections, the anticipated legislative elections in France, and the General Election in the UK, on both sides of the Channel, headlines were filled with numbers and records. In this sea of figures, one tragic broken record has been overlooked: 82 people died or went missing in the English Channel to the UK. Earlier this year, an opinion column signed by NGOs, politicians, and artists denounced the militarization of the coast and the inhumane conditions in which migrants in Northern France are forced to live in.

Despite various warnings from Calais residents, humanitarian aid workers, and human rights activists, the UK and France agreed at the end of February to extend British financial support until 2027 in the hopes of stopping the arrival of new migrants on British shores. Authorities on both sides of the Channel must stop this insufferable inefficient policy, which has no other effect than to endanger migrants and fuel hatred towards them.

Long-standing cooperation between France and the United Kingdom

For the past 30 years, France and the United Kingdom have been tied by several treaties and protocols on border controls, the co-managing of the border, and the funding of greater security measures to prevent migrants from reaching the UK via the harbour of Calais, the Eurotunnel or by dinghies. The year 2016, and the dismantling of the “Calais Jungle” – a slum with more than 6,000 migrants – were a tipping point in the management of migrants by the French authorities. From there on, the strategy is to dissuade migrants from settling down and crossing, thanks to an extensive and expensive police presence, financed partly by the UK up to £232 million between 2014 and 2023.

Violent policies in the name of border and national security

Authorities justify these tremendous yearly expenditures by presenting them to the general population as an absolute necessity. To do so, the stories of these men, women, and children have been framed in a very perverse yet efficient way: their asserted inherent dangerous nature. They mostly come from countries in which their life is threatened – the top five nationalities being Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Albania, and Syria – yet, they are considered illegal immigrants before being people seeking asylum. This is even more surprising given that the United Kingdom and France have ratified the UN Convention on the Status of Refugees, and France has also enshrined the right to asylum in its Constitution. Via their numerous meetings and spending throughout the years, both sides of the Channel acknowledge that the “migrant crisis” is concerning and that one should enact: not primarily because people are dying, but because they are perceived to be violating laws, taking jobs, and threatening values. One only needs to look at how much immigration control was one of Brexit’s promises.

Thanks to this “border spectacle”, where specific language and frame are used by media and authorities to talk about the tragic images of the border and rescues at sea, “borders – and the state’s ability to enforce them – appear legitimate, necessary and natural”. Thus, over the years and millions spent, police patrols and barbed wire have been joined by dogs, drones, and helicopters, as well as CO₂ sensors, thermal imaging cameras, and more. Using images from afar of coast guard boats, covering events by mentioning records of “intercepted” people, arrests, and illegal crossings, media coverage and political discourses deflect attention away from the hostile environment the border has become, and which has no other effects but to worsen this “migrant crisis”.

An ever more critical situation

Far from addressing the migration crisis, this extensive military apparatus is responsible for multiple human rights violations. In the hopes of dissuading the settlement of the new migrants, French authorities have been following since 2016 and the dismantling of the “Jungle of Calais”, what the succession of interior ministers have called a “zero points of fixation” strategy. The latter, as explained by former Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, relies on “a very strong presence and operations every 24 or 48 hours” during which the police seize tents and sleeping bags. As a result, migrants are forced to live hidden in small groups in inhumane conditions with poor access to drinkable water, food, and healthcare. This scattering also complicates the assistance provided by NGOs, not to mention the harassment from police forces.

Several human rights bodies, like the French CNCDH or the Special Rapporteur for Adequate Housing, have denounced the conditions in which people seeking asylum are forced to live, which violates the freedom from degrading treatment, a right recognized by the European Convention on Human Rights but also the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention against Torture and, the Convention on the Rights of the Child. France has also been condemned for failing to protect the most vulnerable, like unaccompanied children.

Moreover, the securitization of the border forces people seeking asylum to resort to ever more dangerous strategies to reach the UK, delivering them to the mercy of smugglers and their small boats. In 2024, more than 36,000 people joined England using dinghies.  This number is below the number of arrivals in 2022, but hides a concerning tendency: the increase in the number of migrants per boat.

What future for migrants in Calais?

The recent political declarations and measures are hardly encouraging for a necessary change of course with the European Parliament approving a new migration and asylum pact – criticized by NGOs for tightening up asylum policies – or France and the UK continuing to blame smugglers and migrants for the situation instead of facing the truth: the securitization of the border is a cost full failure.

In the short term, authorities must offer decent living conditions to the migrants currently located in Northern France by providing shelter, water, food, and basic health care, all of which are fundamental human rights. To do so, they need to hasten the inhuman “anti-fixation” policy. This also means making it easier to apply for asylum. People currently must go to Lille (100km away), because there is no center in Calais. Emergency rescue at sea services must be developed too.

In the long term, the United Kingdom, France, and the European Union must provide safe and legal routes of entry. This requires reforming the current policies like the Dublin Regulation, which does not consider the migration project of people seeking asylum, the intrusive collection of biometric data with Eurodac, or the UK’s lack of a functioning family reunion system which fails to protect unaccompanied children (a bill is currently being drafted to remedy the situation). In short, it is about bringing back humanity in policy making.