"I did a photo shooting with a friend literally three weeks before arriving here. I look at the pictures on my phone... It feels like it was forever ago."

"I'm getting crazy here... No but look around. I'm getting completely crazy."

"There is a lot of pollution, and I thought maybe we can start to clean up some areas of the camp.We also have boots and gas and we try to share as much as we can with the most needed people."

Erik, volunteer

"No english.

A little.

Tea for you?"

"Daesh intruded our homes and killed everyone.

My family is finished.

I had no choice but leave."

Queing up at the "Kitchen".

"Shame on those who only see rags.

Look carefully.

They carry the light.

Of those fighting for their lives."

- Laurent Gaudé

"Abandonment, disinterest, negligence...

The state got accustomed to this kind of indifference.

What about us?"

- Laurent Greilsamer

Life in the camp, February 2016

     Click on the pictures to get details on the camp and its residents

The agreement that was signed in 2003 by members of the European Union. The text obliges migrants to solicit a refugee status in the country they reach first.

However, lengths of application processes, combined with possibly low chances of being accepted and difficult living conditions are often enough to convince refugees to move on to another country.

On average, it takes 16 months to be granted refugee status in France.

The number of refugees living in the new camp. 90% of them are from Iraqi Kurdistan, according to MSF.

The camp has 389 shelters of 10 square meters set up on a dry land, each of them potentially housing up to five people.

MSF funded 80% of the camp and provides a kitchen, a laundry, a “school”, 126 toilets and 66 showers on site.

 The distance between the refugee camp in Grande Synthe and Calais' "Jungle".The closure of the Sangatte holding centre four miles away from Calais in 1999 left migrants wandering around the area.

Without any accommodation left,they set up informal camps around Calais and neighbouring Grande Synthe, Norrent Fontes, Angres and Steenvoorde in critical sanitary and safety conditions.

"We have food and all that

we need.

I'm just

a bit

bored really."

Grande Synthe

Click on each box to reveal key dates and facts about the refugee camp

Map, text and pictures by Chloé Perceval, 2016.

2006

First groups of undocumented migrants settle on an open field in town. The camp then houses forty to eighty people on a regular basis, staying for a week on average.

Their number and origin evolve alongside with geopolitical changes in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. In the early nineties, they are mostly from Kosovo. They are consecutively replaced by Somalians, Afghans, Sudanese, Iranians, Eritreans and Iraqis.

25 miles

October 2015

Following reinforcements of security measures over the French-UK border in July and August 2015 and the deterioration of the political situations in Iraq and Syria, the number of refugees present in the camp goes from 80 to 1,600 by the end of October.

Dublin II

1,300

​March 2016

The camp is dismantled and refugees are taken to a safer area in town. Overwhelmed by the situation during the fall and winter, the town's mayor Damien Carême had taken the decision to contact Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) to discuss the need for a new camp in November 2015. 

"I'm getting completely crazy in here... No but look around. I'm getting crazy."