Space and the migrant camps of Calais: Space-making at the margins

Abstract

This chapter analyses how the online versions of Britain’s two mid-market newspapers framed the migrant camps or ‘jungles’ on the French sea border as marginalised spaces. The French town of Calais has been the focal point of debates about illegal entry to the United Kingdom and in tandem cross-border tensions. The jungle as a physical entity is drawn into space-making in a multitude of ways which are complex and entwined. We examine discursive and material space constructions in framing human migration and how borders as interstitial spaces become continually redefined and reconstructed through the interactions of the corporeal body with the physical environment, policy enactments and cross border patrols. Spaces at the margin functioning beyond metaphors become heuristic entities where their material and intangible construction and destruction have consequences for shaping human empathy and engagement as well as distance and detachment with the migrant as a human and with immigration debates.