There had been other camps known as "jungles" in previous years, but this particular shanty town drew global media attention during the peak of the European migrant crisis in 2015, when its population grew rapidly.

The Government of France initially tolerated the camp, later opting to rehouse 1,500 migrants in shipping containers to be used as shelters on the north-eastern side of the site.

There were concerns over the fate of 200 unaccompanied children and Human Rights Watch published a report in 2017 stating that up to 1,000 migrants were still living in the Calais region.

[4][5] Some migrants lived in the camp while seeking asylum in France, a choice they made because the French system did not provide for them while their claim was being processed, leaving them homeless for the duration.

[6] One migrant from Egypt, a politics graduate, told The Guardian that he had "paid $3,000 (£2,000) to leave Egypt, risked my life on a boat to Italy spending days at sea" and that in one month he had tried 20 times to reach England; another, an Eritrean woman with a one-year-old child, had paid €2,500 (£1,825) – and her husband the same – to sail to Italy, but her husband had drowned during the journey.

[7] Migrants risk their lives when they try to climb aboard or travel on lorries, occasionally falling off and breaking bones; some fatalities en route are also recorded.

[7][8] In September 2016, workers began building a barrier, dubbed "The Great Wall Of Calais", to block refugees from accessing a highway where they could stow away on vehicles bound for Britain.

[22] It was run by La Vie Active[13] and was set up as a place from which food could be distributed, with overnight accommodation for up to 500 women and children added a few months later.

[26] Médecins du Monde stated in 2015 that 62% of the migrants in Calais were young men with an average age of 33, with an increase in the number unaccompanied children (517 in 2014, eight times more than in 2011).

[32] Aid organisations put discrepancies between their and the authorities' figures down to different counting methods and a reluctance from migrants to speak to border police.

[38] By September, the state estimated the population at 6,901, while local non-governmental organisations (NGOs) put it at 9,000 – a figure accepted by Mayor Bouchart.

[40] In July 2017, Human Rights Watch (HRW) presented its findings on police violence in Calais based on interviews conducted with more than 60 temporary residents, half of whom were unaccompanied minors.

", the Human Trafficking Foundation (HTF) noted that the hostilities of the French government and police towards Calais refugees were meant to deter them from initiating the process to seek asylum in the U.K., particularly impacting unaccompanied minors with decreased access to information about their rights.

[43] In 2015, a Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) doctor who had worked in the camp for ten days claimed that the conditions were worse than anything she had seen in African slums.

A. Gill ate at a nameless restaurant run by Mohammed Ali from Peshawar, rating both food and atmosphere four out of five, commenting that the main course was "a properly, cleverly crafted and wholly unexpected dish, made with finesse".

[51] After an appeal by NGOs to the court in Lille that the amenities were vital for feeding residents, a judge blocked authorities from attempting to raze restaurants and shops in August 2016, ruling there was no legal basis for the demolitions.

[53][54] This was a controversial action since the BBC was accused by the Daily Express and the Sun of wasting its licence payers' fees and of taking a political stance.

Senior Church of England figures such as the Bishop of Leeds, the Dean of Durham and the Archbishop of Canterbury said they fully supported the program.

[56] A number of NGOs worked to provide refugee relief, including the French associations L'Aubergue des Migrants, Salam, Secours Catholique, and Utopia 56.

[62][63] NGOs also provided recreation:[62] such as a boxing club[64] and the Good Chance Theatre,[65] which ran from a dome doubling as a community space for other activities.

[67] They had earlier cleared tents and shacks from this area and erected 125 metal shipping containers in their place, converting them into housing units for up to 1,500 migrants.

[73][74] Jaz O'Hara visited with her boyfriend during summer 2015 and decided to collect donations after writing a Facebook post which was shared 60,000 times in a few days.

The performance was organised by Letters Live in the Good Change theatre, a space set up by British volunteers the previous year and included readings by camp residents.

[84][85] Seven attackers belonging to anti-migrant movements and armed with iron bars and electric batons were arrested during the night of 10 February 2016 at Loon-Plage.

[88] On 5 September 2016, truck drivers, local farmers, and trade unionists, protesting against what they saw as "wilful destruction" by migrants residing in the camp, slowed traffic entering the port of Calais and demanded the closure of the Jungle.

Aid groups put the number higher according to a census they had conducted, suggesting there were "at least 3,450 people in the southern part alone, including 300 unaccompanied children".

After Baroness Sheehan had intervened, a number of the children ended up being told by police to return to a derelict and unheated makeshift school building in the camp.

According to figures provided by Le Monde, of the 1,934 minors who had left Calais in 2016, only 468 had been accepted to the U.K., leaving the vast majority of these underage refugees either stranded or missing.

[108] Although she claimed the ban to be a "humanly difficult" decision, Bouchart justified this administrative action by citing the harm that had been inflicted upon Calais and its residents as a result of the informal settlements that had long existed on the city's outskirts.

[110] Police, including the Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité (CRS), and clearance teams regularly evict migrants from their makeshift camps with new encampments later forming in another or the same location.