29/10/2016 Reporters

Welcome to a special edition of Reporters.

I'm Simon Jones - here at the Jungle camp in Calais.

As the French authorities complete the operation to clear the site,

we've a range of reports looking at the issues now facing France

and Britain, and what lessons Britain can learn from the crisis.

-- what lessons Europe can learn from the crisis.

Secunder Kermani joins some of the thousands of migrants

and finds many desperate to get out. in search of a better life -

TRANSLATION: The life in the Jungle is no good, it's no good.

Life after the Jungle - Hugh Schofield reports

on the reception centre for refugees from a camp near Paris.

Welcome to Britain - Daniel Sandford follows the hundreds

of children who have arrived in the UK, and finds reaction

It's not their doing, it's not their fault,

and I've got a little chap of my own and ultimately you want

We can see people streaming towards us across the fields

and I can hear shouts of men and the cries of children all moving

The Balkan route - Fergal Keane traces

the migrants' journey, from the Hungarian border to Calais,

and finds they are still coming in their thousands,

And the last stand, as French authorities declare

the closure a success - Lucy Williamson meets the few

Those who want to go have left, those who are still here

It's become a potent symbol of Europe's migration crisis.

This week, an operation began to clear this massive migrant camp

Many of the 7000 or so inhabitants began queueing for buses before dawn

to be resettled in centres across the country.

They face either deportation or the opportunity

Calais's position as a gateway to Britain has given it

an irresistible magnetism to many seeking a new life.

Secunder Kermani was here in Calais as the exodus began.

They started queueing well before dawn, after months -

and in some cases years - in the camp they call the Jungle,

hundreds of refugees and migrants waited to board buses taking them

In effect giving up on their dreams of coming to Britain, and applying

Clutching his artwork, this man from Darfur

displayed his wounds from life in the Jungle.

Now fed up of trying to board lorries to Britain.

And now you are happy to go anywhere?

Happy too much, because of this life, you see.

In separate queues were the camp's unaccompanied minors,

waiting to be processed and taken to a secure area of the Calais camp.

Many with relatives in Britain hope to be accepted by the Home Office.

And your uncle, in Epsom, have you spoken to him?

He said come on, life in the Jungle is no good.

So how long have you been in the Jungle?

This camp, awful as it was, had become a kind of home to many

people, and this was in effect the main high street.

Now though it's more or less completely abandoned

except for the people making their way up through the camp

towards the areas where you queue for the buses, and there are still

some who are staying on here, undecided about where to go next -

but still hoping to be able to get to the UK.

This man studied chemical engineering in Basra in Iraq.

He has spent the last year living in this hut with two friends.

I can stay here, I can sleep rough if necessary,

because we have families in the UK and we need to go

Even when this whole camp has closed down?

Yes, yes, we are adamant and determined to stay here.

Well you can see what country France is - we have been living here one

year and no one cares about your medical situation,

no one cares about you, so we just got the impression

that France is not good enough to take care of us.

Some might trumpet this as the historic end of a bone

of contention between Britain and France for years,

but the Jungle is not the first refugee camp in Calais and this

isn't the first time one is being closed down.

TRANSLATION: The first certainty is that it's the end of the Calais

camp, but the end of the migration question also depends

We are still fighting to make sure the UK accepts unaccompanied minors

who have family on the other side of the Channel.

Efforts have been made, it's true, since the summit

but those efforts are not enough because as long as the UK refuses

a legal process for immigration, notably for unaccompanied minors,

then the situation will continue to cause difficulties.

In this Calais brasserie many locals were sceptical

There's been talk of migrants moving from here to nearby Dunkirk and even

returning to Calais after a few weeks in the reception centres

TRANSLATION: It's just moving the problem somewhere else,

not necessarily in Calais but somewhere else.

They're probably going to go elsewhere, like

It's a good thing for Syrian people and Eritreans,

because also for the people of Calais, because the camp

decreased the tourism and impacts the economy.

Migrants and refugees have travelled for months

and for many miles to get here, hoping to reach Britain.

A lot now seem to have accepted they'll never make it to the UK,

but others still believe they can and are willing to put up

with conditions even worse than these to get there.

The next stop for most people who have left the Jungle will be one

of the many reception centres for refugees across France.

One town, Villeblevin, has taken migrants from the Calais

camp, where they've been housed in an old convent.

From there, Hugh Schofield sent this report.

In the grounds of a former convent in rural France, Afghans

are teaching Sudanese to play the English game of cricket.

Three days after they arrived here from Calais, the 45 migrants

are slowly acclimatising to the gentler, safer world

Before, this was a holiday camp for Paris schoolchildren.

Television and regular hot meals, all laid on by the Red Cross

Talking to the people here you get the sensation they are still

They've no idea really where in France they are.

But one thing is clear, they do want to stay in France.

They've given up on the idea now of ever getting to England.

I love you, French, I love you, I love you.

Once, they saw France as just a stepping stone on the route to

Now it's the country that is offering them the refuge

I like the French because the government in France

The government in England is no good, because they closed

For now the migrants are staying inside the convent grounds.

They are worried about local reaction.

Not unreasonably, because the people in the village were highly

suspicious when told of the uninvited guests.

The Deputy Mayor told me the decision to house the migrants

here had been taken by Paris without any attempt to consult

It was fine for the migrants to walk around the village, he said,

but only as long as they left the people here alone.

What of the children walking home from school soon in the dark,

Maybe they are very good people, he said, but we just don't know

anything about them, and it's wrong to take this

Centres like this may only be open for a few months,

the time needed to process applications for asylum in France,

after which the migrants will be moved on.

In the meantime it's more of the boredom that they've grown

so accustomed to, but now safer, perhaps even

Hugh Schofield, BBC News, in Villeblevin.

Hundreds of children from the Calais camp have now arrived in Britain.

They include dozens of girls said to be at risk of sexual

exploitation, resettled under an agreement to help particularly

vulnerable children who have no links to the UK, as

Journey's end for one recent resident of the Calais Jungle -

This boy, who says he's 16, fled the fighting in Afghanistan

and travelled over land and sea for over a year.

Last Monday he was brought to Britain to join his uncle,

He told me he was trying to forget everything that had happened to him.

All the difficulties and problems should go away soon, now I'm

Although some new arrivals will go into care or foster homes, this boy

I am not here just for him, I am here to be his mum,

his dad, his brother, his sister, his friend.

I will support him and give him what he needs.

The Home Secretary updated the Commons on what Britain had done

in the last fortnight, in the build-up to the

We have transferred almost 200 children.

This includes more than 60 girls, many of whom had been

identified as at high risk of sexual exploitation.

They are receiving the care and support they need in the UK.

She said hundreds more children from the Jungle had been interviewed

and more would come to the UK in the coming weeks.

These were some of the arrivals from Calais last week.

The Home Office pays local authorities up to ?40,000 per child,

but councils say the true cost is sometimes much more.

Here at a discreet location in Devon, 20 of the recently arrived

boys are staying at a respite centre while decisions are made

about whether they should go into care or join family members.

It's not their doing, it's not their fault,

and I've got a little chap of my own and ultimately you just

want any child to be safe - and if we have the ability

We can't look after our own, so why look after everybody else?

Back in London, the boy, who is desperate to return

to education after his time in the Jungle, has his first meeting

with immigration officials tomorrow, as he starts the formal

process of claiming refugee status in Britain.

Daniel Sandford, BBC News, south London.

The clearing of the Jungle coincides with the hardening of political

attitudes towards refugees over the past year, not only in France

Fergal Keane has travelled along the migrant route from Hungary

in the Balkans to Calais, to test the new mood.

On the Hungarian frontier with Serbia, it feels

as if the great fortress is being defended from the refugees

and migrants who would make Europe their home.

They repeat the refrain I've heard on the migrant trail for years now.

I want to go for a better life, because Afghanistan is war

They made it this far before borders further south started to close.

Now you can see people streaming towards others across the fields

and I can hear shouts of men, the cries of children,

Last October 211,000 landed in the Balkans.

I was here a year ago to witness this fence going up.

That moment which symbolised what you might call

Politicians across western Europe have been since then trying

It has become one of the great defining

In Budapest the government has rejected refugee quotas.

Hungary recasting itself as the defender of European

And of a new continent where camps like Calais will never

First thing, protect the borders - everything else comes after.

Schengen, as we have announced it many times,

Calais cannot be sorted out until we are able to defend

We followed the migrant trail up through Austria into Bavaria,

where history's shade looms over the present.

Hitler had a headquarters and holiday home at Berchtesgaden.

And when he was defeated thousands of Jewish survivors were housed

That legacy profoundly shaped Germany's initial welcome

There are around 1000 living in this area.

Germany too began to impose strict border controls last year.

This man is from Syria and is the house guest of Marietta,

While public opinion has shifted, he still finds Germans tolerant.

They always want to help you and I love to stay here,

TRANSLATION: It's nice to live with him but I do set limits.

Some things he has to learn, how Germans live and what

But political momentum is with those opposed to asylum seekers.

The far right has gained votes by promising a crackdown,

like this grandson of a German wartime refugee.

TRANSLATION: The people are upset, upset because of the

There are many people who say we were not asked,

we want to be asked if such important decisions are made.

They are questioning the cost of this.

By the time I reached Calais, with the British shore

in view, the political mood in Europe was vividly clear.

In the nearby Jungle, people were already moving -

most of them single young men - ahead of the camp's demolition.

This Iraqi family has been here six weeks,

but will soon be moved elsewhere in France.

TRANSLATION: We are only thinking of going there.

There is no other country in our minds.

For the sake of our children's futures.

Closing the Jungle won't deal with the problem, it

And in Africa, the Middle East, large parts of Asia,

there are vast numbers of people who believe that getting to Europe

As long as conflict and endemic poverty in these parts

of the world continue, then however hard a line Europe

takes won't be enough to stem the flow of refugees and migrants.

Fergal Keane, BBC News, Calais.

The Calais situation involves around 7000 people,

but that's just a small fraction of around 1 million migrants

If the French do manage to sort out Calais, maybe they have a lesson

or two that can be applied more generally.

Mark Urban has been looking at the bigger European picture.

One year ago hundreds of thousands were on the move across Europe.

It was epic in scale and posed a profound challenge

But the migrant issue has for the past six months been

Over 1 million migrants arrived in Europe in 2015.

The number ten months into this year is dramatically lower, 341,000.

And in fact the number who have got in since the main route via Greece

and the Balkans were closed in March is about 200,000.

Most of those still arriving are coming via Libya

and Italy, with small flows into Spain and Bulgaria.

Arrivals in Italy - at 142,000 so far this year -

are up, but only by 2% on the same point in 2015.

Most of those making the dangerous journey from Libya are Africans,

from countries like Gambia, Nigeria, and Ghana.

And having been rescued at sea they won't find the better life

Some say that 98% will be rejected for asylum.

Not all will be sent home because legal systems

are slow-moving in certain countries, so what happens

as they get sucked into the informal economy?

They get exploited, and eventually perhaps get sent home.

As for those who make it to Italy or Greece and are accepted

as refugees, an EU quota system to resettle them has

Just 6243 refugees have been relocated in Europe.

1392 from Italy and 4852 from Greece.

Compare that to the 160,000 that EU countries pledged to welcome

under quotas put forward by Jean-Claude Juncker a year ago.

The Juncker relocation plan was doomed from the start.

First of all many European governments didn't want to sign

The Visegrad countries were opposed to it but were strong-armed

into agreeing it mainly by Donald Tusk and other European states.

Secondly, the problem is within the Schengen area,

even if we relocated people to one particular country,

nothing would stop them moving onwards.

Thirdly, it was only for 160,000 refugees, which was a tiny

proportion of the total, so there were many reasons

to believe it would never be implemented -

Those who made their way to the Jungle were often people

who had slipped out of Italian reception centres or made their way

France's decision to process them now underlines the degree

to which national answers have come to define Europe's response

Towards the end of the week French officials said that they had

accomplished the mission to clear the Jungle, but there

was some disruption as some of the departing migrants set fire

Aid workers also raised concerns over the plight

of a number of children, with reports that some migrants had

Lucy Williamson reports on the final days of the Calais Jungle.

The eerie calm that has hung over the Jungle broke. The ending of the

camp telegraphed across the Calais sky. Shelters set ablaze in protest,

perhaps, or resignation tinged with revenge. So far there has been very

little resistance to this clearance, but the operation seems to be

reaching a tipping point. Those who want to go have left. Those who are

still here have a different point to make. At the camp's borders those

who still had homes inside watched and waited, held back by riot

police. Officials say the fires have speeded up the eviction.

TRANSLATION: The last fires in the camp have convinced them. We've seen

some Syrians who didn't want to come initially, they are here now, and

community leaders who said they wanted to go now the communities had

gone, and there was no one left, so it's time to close. The mission was

a success. But migrants have been filing back into the Jungle to sleep

amongst the Ashes. Among them we met this man. His friends, who joined

the buses out on Monday, have told him it wasn't worth leaving, he

said, and they were coming home to Calais. I'm going back to sleep

there. I know the Jungle has been finished, been buried, but it's

better to be there until tomorrow. If the police can we are ready to go

to the detention centre. And aid workers say the speed has led --

left some of the camp's most vulnerable with nowhere to sleep

tonight. In terms of the children they are not all in state

protection. We have counted so many who cannot get into the containers

or get into the centre and have no accommodation whatsoever. The story

of Calais's migrants is over, they say, but for those still determined

to reach Britain it doesn't feel like the end. Lucy Williamson, BBC

News, Calais. And that's all from the special edition of reporters for

this week. From me Simon Jones here at the now empty Jungle camp in

Calais, goodbye for now.