According to a July 2016 census by Help Refugees, the camp was populated by 7,307 migrants - the highest number to date. Of those, 761 are minors according to the census, and the population of the camp grows with 50 people a day on average. It has been stated that the population has surged to nearly 10,000 since the Brexit vote on 23 June 2016.
62% of the migrants in Calais are young men with a mean age of 33, of non-European origin. The mix of nationalities has changed over time, with Kurdish Iraqis being the largest group initially, but by 2014 a growing number of people were also from the Horn of Africa and Sudan. Many of the Kurdish Iraqis later moved to similar camps near Calais and Dunkirk
Most of the refugees do not speak French, and are attempting to enter the British labour market to work illegally rather than claim asylum in France, although the number claiming asylum has risen since the procedures were revised in 2014.
Many migrants have paid smugglers to get them to Calais: one migrant from Egypt, a politics graduate, told The Guardian that he "paid $3,000 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 £1,825 – and her husband the same – to sail to Italy, but her husband had drowned during the journey. 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. The camps themselves are also dangerous, particularly for women, with a volatile mix of desperate young men of different nationalities, drinking, and violence.
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