Dozens of camps have been brought down in Reims in the last three years, the latest one dismantled on October 2019 in rue Henri Paris. Where do these people stay and what do they hope for? Organizations like Collectif Sövkipeu have been trying to help them financial, but with France's changing outlook on accepting refugees, conditions worsen in Reims
“Hot coffee. For you,” says Khair, a 21 one year old Albanian man who migrated to France two years ago. Collectif Sövkipeu, an organization fighting for the rights of asylum seekers, led me to the new location of the asylum seekers, after their camp was dismantled on October 30, 2019. The Sciences Po refugee association, Interagir, had planned a dinner for them the day it got dismantled, according to its member, Anne. Khair is the only person among the 35 people in the abandoned building who can manage to speak French and broken English, and the only person with a job. He reached France after he tried settling in Germany, Italy, Spain, Greece and 10 other EU countries.
“I have many problems in my country. I cannot go to Albania even if I want to. I am single but my family is there… I don’t know how they are doing… but I like France.”
When asked why he had decided to come to France he said,
“I wanted to go to school like you. Well, anyway I work in the city-centre now. But yeah, here at least I have bad work. It is better than no work.”
Arman, who reached France 30 days ago with his wife, types into my Google Translate:
“The government in Albania does not care about us. I have many health problems. My wife and I have no other option. All the people here have no other option. There are 5 families and 7 children. Do you think France will be able to help us?”, and I have no answer.
Calais refugees moving to Reims.
France has been one of the top 5 countries in the world to receive refugees, but after the 2015 Refugee Crisis, laws have changed making it more difficult to find asylum in France. “It was easier for people to be given refugee status in France 10 years ago. If people managed to stay long enough, tried hard enough, they were accepted eventually,” says Saget Danièle, a retired demographer of refugees for the French government. According to her, the rules on accepting refugees were made strict after Nicolas Sarkozy, the then Minister of the Interior, closed down the “Calais Jungle” in 2002. “ The man had no humanity, and neither do his successors. They are all born into good families and it is easy for them to say people are lazy and they just need to go work. The truth is that even the French don’t have work! This is one of the reasons why France does not want to accept refugees anymore.” When asked if the people in the refugee camps would be accepted into the French system, she says “ I believe that the world should have no borders, but that’s me speaking. The people who come here for economic reasons have very little chance of being given the refugee status. A common mistake many asylees make is that they don’t take their documents with them because they think it will work against them. But the French say- we can’t trust them. And the people at camps do not have documents.”
Lucile, a member of, Interagir explains how difficult it is even when people have documents. It is difficult to prove one is being threatened and the interviews in Paris are rigorous and intimidating to these families, especially since they are in French. “The officials want to make sure that the immigrants are not lying. I mean come on, how can they expect them to carry proof when they were running for their lives? The families feel they were not believed and often breakdown because they fear that they will be deported back."
With an acceptance rate of 28.7%, many of these asylum seekers become stateless, either leaving to another country or shifting around in temporary camps which are deemed illegal and eventually demolished by the police. Many enter the vicious cycle of being deported to different EU countries based on where they were received first. Those who have been accepted await a long process of integration in an alien land, and they are the lucky ones. "People don't understand the pain that refugees go through, their nostalgia about their home and their feeling of alienation", says Saget. The struggle is not over when they receive refugee status, it is just the beginning of a brand new one.
Liyana Gasnafar