1. East to West

Swaddled in tin foil, stranded on the seawall straddling Italy and France, refugees from 1970s glamrock, obviously. Or perhaps Gregor Samsa’s younger siblings: insects already; further metamorphosis forbidden.

Salt-blasted and skin peeling after days at sea in an open boat, the girl’s face is patterned like a leaf.

Three proud women on the beach at Kos, pointedly not looking at the photographer. Mother suckling her baby, then grandma in the middle; at her side the younger daughter with film star’s pout. All told, three pairs of lips pressed firmly together in a silent snub – thumbing the eye of the camera.

The logo painted on the side of the refrigerated lorry shows slices of ‘Hyza: honest chicken’  (pretty in pink), twirled round to resemble a rose. By any other name….. Butthe cooling system had died, and putrid liquid was seen dripping from the back of thevehicle. Next morning, the ‘coffins’ sent in to contain human remains were more like sealable sinks.

2. Wessies to Essies

A warm welcome they made of it: the German townspeople of Oer-Erkenschwick setting a precedent, greeting their coach load of migrants with cheery sunflowers;  among them burly bloke in hi-vis vest – Westphalian version of white man van, standing firm against what’s expected of his xenophobic type (supposedly)

3. West to East And Back Again

Zahera Tariq and her four children had exited England via London City, the upmarket airport designed for business travellers. But they were brought back in through thebreeze blocks of down-at-heel Luton, where Burger King counts as fine dining. Alleged to have been migrating to IS before she was stopped and detained in Turkey prior to repatriation, Mrs Tariq may not have noticed the difference. Appearing at Camberwell Magistrates’ Court charged with child abduction, piety was her paramount concern: she refused to stand when Judge Susan Green entered the courtroom, saying her religion required her to sit. Speaking of child abduction, the four smaller Tariqs have been taken into foster care, even though the husband and father was the one to blow the whistle on where they were going. read more

This is the male that walks the tunnel, crosses the Channel, caught on camera.
Arrested attempting a life left in peace.

Splayed against the wall, 40-year-old Sudanese migrant Abdul Rahman Haroun is desperate to stay out of the slipstream of yet another train thundering through at more than 100 mph.

After more than 10 hours in the tunnel, has he got used to this? Or would he crucify himself if only he had a hammer?

On 4 August Rahman Haroun was picked out by Eurotunnel’s monitoring system and recorded as an ‘anomaly’ in ‘interval 5’. Picked up and detained as he approached themouth of the tunnel on the Kent coast, currently remanded in custody he is due to appear at Canterbury Crown Court on 24 August charged with causing an obstruction under the Malicious Damage Act 1861.

This is a cat to catch the mice, gone in a trice down the hole.
And on to Merrie England where the streets are paved.

He can’t find it in himself to blame them – the French police officer deployed to catch migrants trying to make it from Calais to the UK.

He sleeps all day and wakes when they do. He too is away from home, encamped with brother officers in a tent city that mirrors the migrants’.

‘We’re all migrants, now,’ he quips, forgetting that the mirror is always shinier than thereal thing.