News about FRANCE

[Lisa LoveParticipant]

The migrant families camping in front of a Paris school

Right in the center of the French capital, a dozen migrant families set up tents every night and dismantle them at dawn, before the pupils arrive. Paris’s emergency shelter hotline is overwhelmed, as winter arrives.

The colorful tents were packed so tightly that they were touching. On the morning of Monday, November 20, there were almost a hundred of them. They looked like they had huddled together to fight off the night-time chill under the shelter of the overhanging roof of the Saint-Merri-Renard school. In the heart of Paris, between the Centre Pompidou and the Hôtel de Ville, a sad choreography starts at dawn. From the mosaic of canvas emerges, one after the other, people who are still half-asleep. Most are men, often from West Africa. But there are also several women, including a Hungarian woman who is five months pregnant, and about 10 children. The camp’s youngest occupant is a 4-month-old baby.

Every morning, they have to put their things away, often in a large plastic bag hidden among the shrubs in a nearby park. They have to clean up by 8:30 am, before the children who go to the public elementary school arrive. It’s now a well-oiled ritual since school started, even if the number of tents has increased significantly since November 1. For a long time, parents of pupils at the school didn’t notice this nocturnal camp existed.

Then, one fall morning, the municipal police, given the responsibility of ensuring that the tents were dismantled, were late in their rounds and the two worlds crossed. “We note with sadness that a dozen families have been sleeping in front of our school and in the surrounding area for a few weeks now,” wrote representatives………..

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2023/11/24/the-migrant-families-camping-in-front-of-paris-school_6285962_7.html

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• This topic was modified 1 year, 4 months ago by  Lisa Love.

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