Calais (France)

‘Our Boat Was Surrounded by Dead Bodies’: Witnessing a Migrant Tragedy

SULAIMANIYA, Iraq — The boat packed with migrants was about halfway across the English Channel when one of the passengers spotted two orange life jackets bobbing in the water. The seas were rough, and it was only when they got closer that Zana Hamawandani saw the vests contained dead bodies. Soon, other bodies started appearing. […]

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France-U.K. Acrimony Impedes Progress on Channel Crossings

“Migration feeds into this sense that Boris Johnson doesn’t understand his blue-collar political base,” said Matthew Goodwin, a professor of politics at the University of Kent. And unlike earlier fears of immigration, he said, the channel crossings are “a much more emotive and symbolic form of migration that amplifies a sense among some voters that […]

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Undeterred by Channel’s Perils, Desperate Migrants Still Plan to Cross

CALAIS, France — The lights on the opposite side of the English Channel were visible on Thursday, emboldening Emanuel Malbah, an asylum seeker who has been living in a makeshift camp on France’s northern coastline for the past week, dreaming of making a crossing. “I don’t believe that I’ll die,” he said. “I believe I’ll […]

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