The “Jungle of Calais”, a sprawling migrant and refugee camp that existed most prominently from 2014-2016, served as a living representation of the difficulty European states had navigating the influx of 5.6 million migrants and refugees seeking asylum during the European Migrant Crisis. By the end of 2016, 10,000 people inhabited the Jungle of Calais. Of these inhabitants, an estimated 10 percent of them were women, but there is a distinct lack of research surrounding the female refugees and migrants of Calais, and more broadly. The UNHCR estimates that 80 percent of the world’s refugees are women and children, but despite this majority, migration and refugee laws remain gender-neutral at every level of governance, often to the disenfranchisement of the female refugee, who is enfantalized and sensationalized as a victim- leaving her devoid of agency. Calais was no exception, with news headlines purporting: “Save the Women of the Jungle”. What has gone unreported by the popular and media narrative is the strength it takes for these women to survive and find the means to provide for their children and families without resources, and without help from the state. This research uses modern sociologist Anouka Van Eerdewijk’s model of specific expressions of agency (decision-making, leadership, and community action) and applies it to the estimated 1,000 refugee women living in the Calais Jungle from 2014 to 2016 in order to contrast the popular narrative of refugee women as “helpless victims”, and to prove that existing as a vulnerable population and having agency are not mutually exclusive. Refugee women in Calais illustrate that the struggle for survival does not make one a victim, but an activist with a power that must be given back to these women in order to generate real social change.
Author: Emma Leonard
Advisor: Mark McKinney, French
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