The Spectacular Humanity of <i>The Jungle</i>
LONDON—Before it was razed in October 2016, the Jungle had acquired something of a mythic status in the British press. Right-leaning newspapers like the Daily Mail and The Sun portrayed the Calais refugee encampment as a squalid, disease-ridden space where thousands of migrants were trying to illegally and violently sneak across the Channel into England. Left-leaning publications described the Jungle both as a colossal humanitarian failure and as a remarkable achievement—a functioning community whose demolishment would only worsen the situation for its residents.
Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson, friends from Oxford University who’d formed a playwriting team, first heard about the Jungle in 2015, and in the late summer, they visited it in person. While they arrived with
