IN PICTURES: The life of migrants in Calais

The some 2,000 migrants congregated at the French port of Calais have created their own city while they wait for their chance to smuggle themselves to Britain. Here is a look inside their difficult and fascinating world.

Published: 15 October 2014 16:59 CEST

IN PICTURES: The life of migrants in Calais

Here is a look inside the migrant crisis on France's northern coast. Photo: Joshua Melvin/The Local

As they wait for a chance to stow away aboard a UK-bound truck, thousands of migrants have created an improvised, but functional community in squats and makeshift camps in Calais in northern France.

Their world is devoid of most home comforts and is supported by a minimum of the essentials needed to live for an extended period of time such as food rations, jerry-rigged shelters and sources of drinking water.

The Local spent a day inside the migrants' community, seeing the ingenuity of some of the migrants and the normality that daily life has taken on for many people there, but also the brutality of their existence.

Click here for our gallery showing the life of Calais migrants

(A migrant's improvised shelter near the Port of Calais Photo: Joshua Melvin/The Local)

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