Paper short abstract:

Calais Children: A Case to Answer is a film and live campaign by director Sue Clayton. The 62-minute film follows scandal of what happened to the 2000 lone children who were in the Calais Jungle as it burned down in late 2016 - most of whom had a legal case to be in the UK. www.calais.gebnet.co.uk

Paper long abstract:

Calais Children: A Case to Answer  (UK, 2017) is a compelling 62 minute film by Sue Clayton,  following the scandal the almost 2000 lone refugee children left abandoned in the Calais Jungle when it was destroyed in late 2016 -  though most had a legal case to be in the UK. http://calais.gebnet.co.uk  The film was submitted as her witness statement to the High Court challenge that she and human rights lawyers made to the UK government ("ZS versus the Secretary of State", 2018).  

The first 15 minutes of the film will be shown during the panel (e-paper). 

This is collaborative film practice supporting solidarity and resistance. The research used auto-ethnographic techniques related to the notion of migratory aesthetics- video diaries, testimonies, self-filming - with unaccompanied refugee minors. It uses a widescreen frame and drone cameras hover showing the proximity of sea, camp, and fences intercut with the grounded migrants point-of-view. 

Sue Clayton is a journalist and a feature and documentary film maker. She has worked on various child and youth asylum projects over 15 years, and consults on news stories for BBC, ITV and Channel 4.

Her work is social-justice driven, but she is also concerned with the construction of the young migrant identity, and issues of 'bordering' and self-representation. To this end she is creating an archive of interviews with young asylum seekers in the UK - see www.bigjourneys.org and writes on identity issues in the co-edited book Unaccompanied Young Migrants: Identity, Care and Justice (Policy Press 2019).