The infamous shantytown called the "Jungle," in Calais, France, is now being dismantled. It has been a vivid symbol of the refugee-migrant crisis, and also characteristic of Europe's mixed, bureaucratic attempts at how to deal with it.
The Jungle of Calais has been the migrants' attempt to rescue themselves, making their own temporary shelters and foraging for food. Many migrants built their hopes on the false premise that Britain was almost a promised land, if only the migrants could cross the English Channel by way of the Eurotunnel – dangerously, on a literal underground railroad, as if inviting an accident.
At its height, the Jungle had a population of about 10,000. As time went by, many of the migrants at Calais came to realize that their hopes of the Channel crossing and finding any relatives and friends in England were slim. Rumours of Brexit and economic slowdown in Britain may have figured, too.
The migrants were, in the meantime, exposed to contaminated water and all sorts of other sordid conditions. They typically only had one meal a day. The camp's population has fallen to 6,300, as if by a natural process. But as of a recent count, there are still 539 unaccompanied minors, for whom we must fear.
In the light, or rather the shadow of all this, the migrants are right to yield to the not-so-very-terrible ministrations of the French bureaucracy.
Instructions have been given not to use bulldozers to tear down the migrants' shelters; instead, the French workers are taking apart their former homes by slower, less aggressive methods, though some sledgehammers are at work.
The former inhabitants of the Jungle will be distributed by bus among 280 "reception centres" across France, where they will be housed and have their refugee claims processed – and accepted or ultimately rejected. This is their least bad prospect, unless war recedes from their homelands.
In spite of all this, maybe as many as 200 migrants may persist in Calais, scrounging some sort of living, or else finding some way across the Strait of Dover – 35 kilometres at the narrowest point, or getting a small boat to the nearby, visible Channel Islands, which are British. Somehow, the next country on is always believed to be the better one.