Once there, in a camp nicknames the ‘New Jungle’, they find themselves with no housing, disgusting sanitation and virtually no cooking facilities. There is one toilet roughly for every 200 people, and virtually no showers so many people are unable to wash. Health and sanitary conditions are very bad, according to two British academics: Dr.Thom Davies, a research fellow in Geography and a photographer at the University of Birmingham, and Dr. Arshad Isakjee, a research fellow in Geography and migration also at the University of Birmingham who were there last week.
Knowing that life is not going to be easy for them in the UK, only a small percentage of migrants actually travel to Calais and try to make the illegal crossing into the UK. Nevertheless, there are roughly 3,500 people in the camp who stay there for anything from a few days to 8 months or longer, in the case of people who decide to apply for asylum in France and have nowhere to stay.