I n the decade since the demolition of the “Jungle ”, an area of Calais where thousands of asylum seekers set up makeshift shelters before embarking on Channel crossings to the UK, everything and nothing has changed.

This week, in a woodland clearing not far from one of Calais’s busy main roads, several brightly coloured tents are pitched. A jacket hanging from a tree branch blows in the brisk autumnal breeze alongside a belt decorated with union flags. It is only October but the wind makes the temperature feel several degrees chillier.

“I live in a tent,” says Adam*, at a nearby charity-run phone charging session. He is an electrical engineering student from Sudan who fled his country when the war started. “We have been evicted so many times. It is not worth having any possessions because the police take everything. I only have the clothes you can see me wearing now.”

Tents, clothing and other possessions are often destroyed or confiscated by police.…