Tens of thousands of migrants cross the Channel each year towards the United Kingdom, but some also make the journey in the opposite direction. Though marginal and not widely studied, French authorities are monitoring this phenomenon, which they refer to as "reverse flows".

In 2024, 93 migrants were arrested for crossing irregularly from the United Kingdom to France, according to data transmitted by the Hauts-de-France prefecture. "There were fewer than five in previous years," Louis-Xavier Thirode, French state official in the Calais region, told InfoMigrants. This explains "the attention of French authorities towards illegal entries into French territory from Great Britain".

Those who use the UK as a 'back door'

Among these "reverse flows," there are two types of populations. The first are migrants who aimed for France as their final destination. They "are arrested, often on public transport, on the train or the ferry. They are detected at the French border by customs or the police, more than in the UK. Generally, they are in an irregular situation, so they receive a deportation notice and are placed in an administrative detention center (CRA), or they benefit from return measures. Some also apply for asylum," Thirode explained.

We are talking in particular about "Pakistanis and Moroccans, who have never set foot on French territory and who arrive in Europe thanks to UK visas," Mathilde Potel, French police deputy in charge of a task force for combatting irregular immigration, explained to InfoMigrants in early August.

Numerous reports in the British press support this theory. In August 2023, around 22 North African migrants – including Algerians, Moroccans and Tunisians – were arrested by police in Dover as they attempted to use a truck to enter France irregularly.

This new method has a double advantage for the migrants. On the one hand, they avoid a perilous crossing of the Central Mediterranean and significantly shorten their migration route. On the other hand, they arrive legally in the United Kingdom and are therefore not necessarily deportable if stopped at the French border.

Also read: France to UK: Why do migrants risk the Channel crossing?

"We have to determine what to do because they have a valid entry permit to the United Kingdom. It is possible that they are in an irregular situation because they came here under false pretenses," a British police source explained to the Daily Telegraph.

Nearly 40,000 tourist visas were issued by the UK to Moroccans and Algerians in 2023. "It takes a lot of diplomatic work to understand how these people arrive, and we are very vigilant in the face of this phenomenon, which is rather unusual," Potel said.

More recently, two men, including a Moroccan citizen, were sentenced to five and six years in prison for smuggling 39 migrants of Algerian and Moroccan origin into France from the United Kingdom in a refrigerated truck.

Those disappointed by the UK

The other population of "reverse flows" is made up of those disappointed by the United Kingdom. Most of them had their asylum applications rejected and found themselves, once again, in an irregular situation and at risk of deportation.

Last May, in Dunkirk, a British journalist from the Sky News television channel met Omar, a 52-year-old Kurd who had spent 14,000 euros to go from Kurdistan to the United Kingdom, before paying a smuggler an additional 600 pounds to return to France, after failing to get a regular immigration status in the UK.

"I was told that my asylum application had been rejected. I could no longer bear being in Great Britain. They could have arrested me and sent me to Rwanda or Iraq. It's a terrible feeling to be back here, but what can I do?", he told Sky News.

Also read: Channel crossings: 'More people die when they set sail than on the open sea'

2,000 euros for the return trip by truck

For others, like Mohammed Boumatta, it was the lack of money and difficult living conditions that ended his British dream. In March, the Daily Mail met this young Moroccan while he was wandering on the beaches of Dover (southern England), desperately looking for a truck to cross the Channel in the opposite direction.

According to the British tabloid, smugglers ask for around 2,000 euros for the return trip. "I almost died last night," he said. "I was on a truck that didn't stop for eight hours. I was hanging on. The ground was only a few inches from my cheek. The noise was terrible." Unfortunately for him, it turned out that the truck was not going to the ferry terminal but to the airport. In a report for Arte, French journalist Julien Goudichaud also met several migrants on British soil who wanted to return to France.

Also read: UK: Survey of 200 migrant domestic workers reveals extent of employer abuse

On the French side, however, the associations interviewed did not come across such profiles during the patrols. "I think these people do not stay in Calais after having crossed" to the French shore, Axel Gaudinat, coordinator of Utopia 56 in Calais, told InfoMigrants.

Has the plan to expel asylum seekers to Rwanda scared some people? "The figures [of small boat crossings] show that it didn't have much impact on their motivation to come, mainly because they had very little detail on the implementation of this law, which was ultimately abandoned," Peter Walsch, a lecturer in migration studies at the University of Oxford, told InfoMigrants.