Note

Since October 1981, when the government legalised administrative and judicial detention of migrants without valid documents, the total capacity of centres has steadily increased. Over a period of 12 years, from 2000 to 2012, it increased from 600 to nearly 2,500 places. The visual entitled “migrant hunt” shows that migrants transiting in the Calais region also face other forms of restriction. The difficulties they face in obtaining food, medical care, lodging requests for asylum, accessing accommodation in emergency centres etc. lead them to live in jungles or squats which, over time, have become alternatives to migrant detention. Indeed these sites enable police who tolerate informal camps and their reconstruction after successive demolitions, to identify those present on an almost daily basis. As a result, these spaces can be considered as ante chambers for the administrative detention of migrants in the sense that the large majority of arrests take place on these sites and are followed by other more official forms of detention.