‘We can live or die, but we are going to the UK’: the Calais refugees clinging desperately to a dream

Seventy-five people have died or gone missing trying to cross the Channel in small boats this year. What keeps them coming, despite the ever harsher attempts to deter them?

As you look down on a patch of ground in a pleasant neighbourhood in Calais, a large number of creamy grey boulders are visible. Squeezed in between these enormous rocks are dozens of frayed tents. Smoke from wood fires floats in the air as groups of men and boys walk around laughing and talking in the morning sunshine, sharing clementines and cigarettes.

The tent dwellers are asylum seekers hoping to travel by dinghy across the Channel to the UK. Most on this site only arrived in Calais in the past week or two and none expect to be staying long. But now they must contend with not just the civic authorities in this seaside town but the might of both the British and French states.

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