Initially conceived as a temporary measure and targeted for a specific crisis situation, since then more than centres of this type have been opened in different locations in France β sites which were used to disperse the inhabitants of the Calais camp during its final evacuation. Tracing the genesis of these centres is an opportunity to examine the implementation of ad hoc policies designed in emergencies, and their subsequent integration into a national policy for the distribution of asylum seekers around the country.
The creation of this measure, at the intersection of public order and humanitarian issues, sheds light on the effects of temporality on public action and on the practices of governmental agencies. However, some crises give rise to the reverse: dispersion policies. Initially conceived as temporary and targeted for a specific critical situation, the measure has been subject to improvisation, reversals, exemptions and retaking control. This case study examines an emergency policy in situ and more broadly sheds light on the question of temporality in the development and implementation of public policy.
The genesis of CAOs during β occurred in the particular and ephemeral context of the crisis caused by the establishment of a large, highly publicized, informal migrant encampment in Calais. In our case, CAOs are distinctive as a measure aimed at those initially excluded from public policy around reception and shelter, i.
The crisis seems to have allowed a digression from the status quo in order to resolve the accommodation issue by including these individuals in the category of asylum seekers. A designation as an emergency allows the mobilization of extraordinary efforts and expenses, as well as the overriding of rules of equity and principles of legal stability. By definition, emergency solutions are versatile and are implemented experimentally in an improvised manner through negotiated adjustments in the field.
Finally, we will look at the way in which the programme was perpetuated beyond this critical phase by redefining its mode of operation. Inside, a civil defence crisis and disaster management centre organized the flow of people. Officers from the French Agency of Immigration and Integration OFII registered migrants, giving them a bracelet with a colour corresponding to the region they would be relocated to.
