Refugees have been slow to overcome associating the container camp's handprint scanner with deportation, says Beatrice Lorigan, a British volunteer who helps provide Wi-Fi to the Jungle from a converted bus. "Everybody was really suspicious," she says, a laptop with a cracked screen balanced on her knee. Volunteers believe the information stored in the system is separate from the immigration database, but without official confirmation refugees aren't reassured. The government in Calais didn't respond to a request for comment. Neither did Zalix, the scanner manufacturer, or Biro, the security contractor.
The container camp has strongfit designers fly away by rose halsey case for apple iphone 7 - white/pink/blue a single entrance, Residents open the hand scanner, which is enclosed in a gray plastic box, They type in an access code and place their hand on a palm reader, If the code and print match, the scanner unlocks a turnstile, the kind you see at any major sporting event, When we try to take a closer look at the hand scanners, security guards in red Biro Sécurité uniforms warn us not to take photographs, Residents of the government camp use the handprint scanners that control access to the containers, This was as close as we could get before private security guards warned us off..
The guards and fences look formidable. But around the back of the container camp, refugees have hollowed out a patch of soft sand under the fence and casually slip in and out. The hand scanner, guards and fences reflect the authoritarian attitudes of the hard-line Calais government, led by Mayor Natacha Bouchart. Just 20 miles from Dover's famous white cliffs, this busy port is the nearest point to the UK on the European mainland. For more than 15 years, the peaceful countryside has been a bottleneck for refugees and migrants heading to the UK, to the dismay of locals. At the entrance to the Jungle, a squat concrete pillbox is spray painted with English-language graffiti reading, "Stop wasting taxes on this bullshit."Some 20 miles east along the French coast, near Dunkirk, authorities in Grande-Synthe have a more sympathetic attitude toward refugees. Here, Mayor Damien Careme has supported humanitarian organizations including MSF and Utopia 56 in building a very different type of community.
Grande-Synthe is the first French refugee camp to meet the humanitarian standards set by the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees, Nestled between a leafy stream and a rail yard, the camp is relatively low-tech: a grid of roughly 360 cabins made of plywood with small windows and corrugated plastic roofs, Families can lock the cabins to protect their belongings, The site has airy toilet and shower blocks cleaned by French attendants, in stark contrast to the overworked, foul-smelling portable toilets at the Jungle, A laundry and small store line a sleepy square near the entrance, Unlike the Jungle, children scamper around the grounds and gather at school buildings, Posters advertise strongfit designers fly away by rose halsey case for apple iphone 7 - white/pink/blue French and English lessons, some of which are exclusively for women, while other signs offer rides into town and useful information in Kurdish, Arabic and Farsi..
Unlike the container camp, Grande-Synthe is built around the autonomy of the people who live here. "They have access to legal information to make the best decisions for themselves," MSF's Daniel Barney says. "And they have access to community facilities, community kitchens and places where they can have a bit of dignity and take ownership of their daily lives."There are no guards and no fences at Grande-Synthe. Importantly, there are no high-tech handprint scanners. Grande-Synthe has been built with the best of humanitarian intentions, but organized crime has infiltrated the camp.