A hostile political and media landscape
Across Europe, and particularly in France, the political and media treatment of exile has reached a new low. Migration has become the central battleground of electoral politics — a subject no longer discussed in terms of human rights or international obligations, but of threat, invasion, and national identity.
In France, the far right has set the terms of the debate for over a decade. Mainstream parties have followed. The result is a political consensus that treats border enforcement as a priority and the protection of exiled people as an afterthought — or a liability. Laws have been tightened. Detention has expanded. The language of "flows" and "pressure" has replaced the language of people.
The media has largely mirrored this shift. In newsrooms and on television sets, people in exile are more often discussed as a problem to be managed than as human beings with rights, histories, and agency. They appear in headlines during election campaigns, in footage of boats crossing the Channel, in statistics. Rarely do they speak. Rarely are they named. Rarely are they seen as individuals.
Borders and exile
Exile is not a choice. It is what happens when staying becomes impossible — when war, persecution, poverty, or climate collapse make a life unliveable.
Every year, millions of people are forced to leave their homes. They cross deserts, seas, and mountains. They survive journeys that should not exist. They arrive at the borders of wealthy countries that built much of their prosperity on the exploitation of the very regions people are fleeing from — and find those borders closed.
The European Union has spent the last two decades building what it calls a "migration management" system. In practice, it is a system of exclusion. Deals with authoritarian governments to stop people before they reach European soil. Detention camps. Pushbacks — illegal under international law — carried out with the tacit approval of European institutions. A Search and Rescue capacity in the Mediterranean deliberately undermined to act as a deterrent.
The message is clear: you are not welcome. The method is attrition. The cost is paid in human lives.
For those who survive the journey and reach a border like Calais, the ordeal does not end. It enters a new phase — one of waiting, exhaustion, and systematic discouragement.
Discrimination and the denial of dignity
People in exile face not only the violence of borders, but the everyday violence of discrimination — in access to housing, healthcare, legal support, and basic rights.
In France, undocumented people and asylum seekers navigate a system designed to be opaque, slow, and discouraging. Many do not speak French. Few have access to adequate legal representation. Many have experienced trauma — war, torture, sexual violence, loss — that goes unacknowledged and untreated.
At the same time, they are subject to forms of discrimination that extend far beyond their legal status. Racism is structural and visible: in police practices, in the media, in public discourse. Black and brown bodies at the border are treated with a level of suspicion and violence that is not applied equally. This is documented. This is known. And it is rarely named for what it is.
To be in exile in Europe today is to be rendered simultaneously hyper-visible — as a problem, a figure, a symbol — and invisible as a person.
Calais: the border made concrete
Calais is a city of 70,000 inhabitants at the edge of the European continent, 34 kilometres from the English coast. It is one of the busiest maritime passages in the world. It is also where European border policy reveals itself most nakedly.
Since the mid-1990s, Calais has been a place of transit and waiting for thousands of people trying to reach the United Kingdom — fleeing conflict in Sudan, Afghanistan, Eritrea, Syria, Iran, Ethiopia, and elsewhere. In the absence of legal pathways, they live in makeshift camps in the woods, under bridges, along roadsides.
In October 2016, the French authorities demolished the "Jungle" — a makeshift settlement that had grown to house between 8,000 and 10,000 people, with its own schools, restaurants, places of worship, and community structures. Its destruction was presented as a solution. It was not. It was a dispersal.
Since then, the French state has pursued a policy of systematic eviction. Camps are dismantled, sometimes daily. Tents are slashed. Blankets, phones, documents, and medication are confiscated. People are bussed to other towns and return within days, because there is nowhere else to go. Human Rights Observers documented 238 evictions in the first three months of 2021 alone — roughly one every twelve hours.
The violence is not only logistical. Police violence at the border has been documented repeatedly by French and international human rights organisations, including the Défenseur des droits, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International. Tear gas used in camps. Beatings. Arbitrary detention. Obstacles placed in the way of humanitarian aid distribution.
And the Channel itself has become a graveyard. Since 1999, at least 473 people have died attempting to cross from France to the United Kingdom — in trucks, in the tunnel, and increasingly in small inflatable boats on one of the world's most dangerous stretches of water. In November 2021, 27 people drowned in a single night. In 2024, 72 people lost their lives — the deadliest year on record.
But Calais is also something else.
Beneath the violence and the political noise, there is another Calais — one that rarely makes the headlines. A Calais of extraordinary, stubborn, everyday solidarity.
For decades, hundreds of volunteers and professionals have organised here. They distribute food, clothing, and hygiene kits in the camps. They provide medical care in the mud. They offer legal support to people who have never been told they have rights. They document abuses, file complaints, and go to court. They teach languages, create art, build community.
Associations like l'Auberge des Migrants, Utopia 56, Médecins Sans Frontières, Care4Calais, Human Rights Observers, and many others have maintained a permanent presence at the border for years — often in the face of legal obstacles, police pressure, and political hostility. Volunteers come from across France and Europe. Some stay for a week. Others never leave.
This solidarity is not charity. It is resistance. It is the refusal, repeated every day, to accept that some lives matter less than others.
Places like the Maison d'Entraide et de Ressources (M.E.R) embody this spirit. They are proof that another relationship to the border is possible — one built not on exclusion and fear, but on encounter, dignity, and shared humanity.
It is within this ecosystem of resistance and solidarity that Lakta was born. And it is in dialogue with these people and these organisations that we intend to work.