Tecca, Victoria Marie; (2022) To Where the Clock Changes: Migrant Illegalisation and its Consequences Along the France-UK Border. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

The history of British immigration control has culminated in the establishment and growth of informal, camp-like migrant settlements in northern France. Despite their proliferation across Europe, the current literature does not yet provide sufficient anthropological understanding of these spaces. To bridge this gap, this thesis draws on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2018 and 2019 exploring the intersections of violence and affect in one particular settlement, Dankix. Dankix is continuously built and rebuilt by its street homeless undocumented Kurdish residents, as they attempt to reach the United Kingdom in lorries and small boats. Since the turn of the century, over 340 people have died along the France-UK border. This thesis examines the circumstances that lead to death in Dankix. It explores the way that different forms of violence are exerted upon people living in the settlement, how they are elucidated through interpersonal encounters, and how residents negotiate such a violent milieu in their bid to reach the UK. In addressing these issues, this research examines how structures of violence become (in)visible and shape the everyday. It focuses on the humanitarian encounter, smuggling and other money-making strategies, arrest and detention, embodiment, and border death to illustrate life and death within a setting to which, as yet, scholars have paid little attention. This thesis shows that violence transforms the economy of affective attachments through which Dankix residents experience, mediate, and interpret the world around them, and their place within it. It draws out particularities of informal camps to show how key themes in migration literature, such as waiting, are complicated by this setting and its spatial politics. Finally, it argues that Dankix has become a space where death is misrecognised as inevitable. It concludes by making policy recommendations that, if implemented, would enable Dankix residents to seek asylum in the UK safely.

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