Cross-Channel Tensions

I begin looking at the migrant situation in Calais by addressing the link between the UK and France at this point in space. The current narrative in media coverage of migrants attempting to enter the UK from the European continent revolves around a topic which has been a source of Anglo-Franco tensions for almost a millennium – the Channel. In 2020, over 6000 people have made ‘clandestine’ attempts to cross the Channel from the European continent to the United Kingdom. Both the UK government and France have stepped up the rhetoric of criminality. The Border Force attributes the high number of crossings to the actions of criminal gangs and have pledged to ‘crack down’ on this activity.

Ferries have operated in the region transporting people and cargo between the two landmasses for over three millennia. The first recorded Channel ferry was a boat from the Bronze age. In the 1800s, Charles Dickens writes extensively about channel crossings in A Tale of Two Cities and his journalistic works. In 2019, a total of 8.6 million passengers travelled along the Calais-Dover ferry route. For the most part, the United Kingdom and France have been separated by a maritime border. The idea of a physical link between the two in the form of a tunnel had been floated since 1802, with a scheme backed at the time by Napoleon. However, due to a variety of social, political, economic and technological barriers, this idea did not come to fruition until almost two-hundred years later in 1994 when the Channel Tunnel as we know it was opened. During this period, the relationship between Britain, Europe and indeed the world has undergone a series of fundamental shifts.

Calais’ geographical location has placed it in a unique position with regards to Anglo-French relations. During the 14th Century following the Battle of Crécy between England and France it became England’s only territory on the European continent and by 1372 had become a parliamentary borough with representation in English parliament. Over the following two centuries, the Pale of Calais became a gateway for staple trade contributing a great amount to England’s revenue and economy. Although England’s hold over Calais ended in the mid-16th Century, there remain several references to this period that exist in Calais today. I cannot help but draw links between Calais under English rule and the Calais we know today.

The establishment of official ‘civic links’ between Dover and Calais in the 1970s followed by the creation of the ‘Transmanche Region’ twinning Kent and Nord-Pas-de-Calais in 1987 and finally the construction of the Channel tunnel led to speculation and commentary about the future of cities localised along the Anglo-French border such as Calais and Dover. One paper by Odile Heddebaut in 2002 even questioned the potential of Calais-Dover to become binational cities. Due to a myriad of factors, such close integration between the two cities failed to materials and the Euroregion incorporating Kent and Nord-Pas-de-Calais eventually slipped out of the public conscience. Nevertheless, the Sangatte Protocol between the UK and France established ‘juxtaposed controls’ at Eurotunnel terminals across the two counties as well as the ports of Calais and Dunkirk. The migrant situation in Calais has led to a joint Anglo-French effort to further securitise the port and the UK alone has invested over £350 million to achieve this. As a result of this, there is an established UK Border Force presence throughout so-called Control Zones in the Port of Calais. There is a complex question of sovereignty and national responsibility in these arguably British pockets of land within the Northern France, where British time and British telephone numbers are used. Unlike UK airports, one cannot place an asylum claim to Border Force officials within these Control Zones in France, forcing those who wish to make a claim in the UK to cross the Channel.

Naturally the cross-Channel relationship has been turned on its head with the onset of Brexit. Visions of any further integration between the areas included in the Transmanche Region have been thrown into question. A sense of British nationalism and European protectionism has led to a schism across the Channel and harkens back to the world as experienced and described by Dickens where Anglo-French tensions were at a high following the attempted assassination of Napoleon III in 1858 by Felice Orsini and other Italian nationalists and supported by English radicals who had recently crossed the Channel from England to France. The French blamed England for allowing the terrorists to cross the Channel into France. However, the English claimed that it was only until he had left England’s shores that Orsini and his co-conspirators became criminals. In this scenario, the Channel had become a contested space of suspicion and surveillance much like it has now, although it is perhaps ironic that at the time, it was believed in British politics that refugees should be given asylum without control or registration. A Tale of Two Citiesfictionalises the tensions between the two countries and draws attention to the paranoid and nationalist sentiment felt by the public on both sides of the Channel, but projects a wishful vision in which Dover and Calais, the two ends of the same rope, could become one.

All this perhaps alludes to the malleable and complex nature of borders, even those drawn across geographical boundaries such as those implied by the Channel. It also draws into question our notion of regular and irregular movement across these borders and positions the Channel crossing as a phenomenon that is highly politicised but has also brought great benefits to the regions it connects.