ABSTRACT
This chapter contextualizes the recurrent demolition of the Jungles and the re-making and reclaiming of the space in Calais by the displaced Other within the political and social context of France and the UK. We argue that the demolitions became ritualistic episodes to disperse the inhabitants and reassert an intolerance of quasi-permanent settlements. The threat and chaos associated with the jungle and their often-negative depictions in the media reports meant that the camps became spaces of myth making. The dehumanizing discourses that confronted this humanitarian problem meant that the Jungle became a space of myth and mystery amenable to a multitude of readings. Here the ‘child’ figure could be turned into a suspect category and the human acquire beastly attributes while the camps reduced ordered and governed spaces into squalor. Such mythmaking and its associated threat meant the jungle had to be periodically and ritually erased to reclaim a sense of order and control over Calais. The rituals of erasure became a mechanism to contain the madness unleashed by the camp and to expiate it from the visual disarray it brought to the town as a recurrent reminder of the authorities’ loss of control.
