Remapping the Borderlands of Britain: The Calais ‘Jungle’ and the Enduring Legacy of Imperial Frontier Policing

This chapter investigates the representations of Europe’s shifting borderlands in contemporary Britain, against the backdrop of the perceived “migrant crisis” which has given renewed visibility to liminal spaces while reviving colonial representations of subversive otherness. Marked by violent geographies of exclusion that are notably expressed through animalising metaphors, the Calais “Jungle” appears as a space of exception that conjures up the colonial practices associated with the multilayered frontier mapping between Afghanistan and India, Britain’s alter ego. The mnemonic as well as the geographical connections between the colonial borderlands and the contemporary British borders are exemplified by the itinerary of Afghan migrants displaced by successive layers of (post-) imperial warfare, from the so-called AfPak “tribal areas” to the gates of Fortress Europe. The early twenty-first century has witnessed the resurgence of colonial narratives about cross-boundary subversion illustrated by pervasive representations of migrants attempting to cross British borders, which contributes to the perception of migrants as a threat to Western security and integrity. During the recent British military intervention in Afghanistan (2001–2014), the ambivalent characterisation of Afghan native interpreters—who epitomise the transgression of linguistic and ideological boundaries—echoed the depiction of (semi-) colonised territories perceived as irreducibly other and yet strangely familiar during the imperial period. In the aftermath of the conflict, debates surrounding the asylum demands made by Afghan interpreters to the UK are therefore imbued with orientalist anxieties that reveal the long shadows of colonial history and warfare characterising British collusion with Afghanistan.