I lived with a group of immigrants that come from Bulgaria to France during 4 months. They belong to a Muslim minority in Bulgaria and they live in tend in the “Bois de Vincennes” the largest park of Paris. I was asking myself how they could live in such situation and how they can provide food for themselves. They are not gipsy they are European citizen and they come from the poorest part of Europe. To speak with them I used the Russian that is very similar to Bulgarian, because they don’t speak French or English. Time by time I start to understand how the economy of immigration in Europe was changing between the European countries during the worst economical crisis of the Europe after the Second World War. Three hundred people are living here in tends. Half of them are French half are European citizens. They left their country because they have lost their jobs and they have to send money to their relatives at home. They are between twenty-five and fifty years old. Most of them are from East Europe and they lived two crises: the political crisis in the nineties and now the economic one. A generation.
They have left their children with grandparents at home.
You have to know someone from inside to enter in the wood. Would be a cousin or a friend doesn’t matter. The city authorities tolerate it if they keep being invisible to the rest of the city. Children under 18 are not allowed. And no tables, no chairs, no fires are tolerated by police. Two or three people die every winter from cold.
They collect the metal scrap whatever they find in the trash.
Beds, wireless, washing machines, water heaters, and all metal scrap are sold to recycling center (mostly managed by the Manouche, the France gypsies). They divide the iron from copper and aluminum and reintroduce them into the production cycle. 100kg of metal will pay 15 euro. Every year more and more people do it. Most of them arrive from Italy, Spain and Greece where during the period of richness they collected money to buy a house in their country and now they got debit to pay. The metal scrub is paid by a bank checks. But nobody in the wood has a bank account, and then intermediates pay the checks taking a commission of 20%. If they have not a van to collect the scrub metal they look in the trash finding something to sell. Clothes and shoes, phones, computer parts are sold at the flea market, if police don’t hurt you. They pay 16% as commission to send money to their relatives at home. No money left to rent a flat.
Even if the authorities tolerate them, due to the growing number of people that come here to live the state allocated specific founding for their return in their original country (aide au retour humanitaire – in French). Most of them accept the 300-euro but come back in France some months later.
They have left their children with grandparents at home.
You have to know someone from inside to enter in the wood. Would be a cousin or a friend doesn’t matter. The city authorities tolerate it if they keep being invisible to the rest of the city. Children under 18 are not allowed. And no tables, no chairs, no fires are tolerated by police. Two or three people die every winter from cold.
They collect the metal scrap whatever they find in the trash.
Beds, wireless, washing machines, water heaters, and all metal scrap are sold to recycling center (mostly managed by the Manouche, the France gypsies). They divide the iron from copper and aluminum and reintroduce them into the production cycle. 100kg of metal will pay 15 euro. Every year more and more people do it. Most of them arrive from Italy, Spain and Greece where during the period of richness they collected money to buy a house in their country and now they got debit to pay. The metal scrub is paid by a bank checks. But nobody in the wood has a bank account, and then intermediates pay the checks taking a commission of 20%. If they have not a van to collect the scrub metal they look in the trash finding something to sell. Clothes and shoes, phones, computer parts are sold at the flea market, if police don’t hurt you. They pay 16% as commission to send money to their relatives at home. No money left to rent a flat.
Even if the authorities tolerate them, due to the growing number of people that come here to live the state allocated specific founding for their return in their original country (aide au retour humanitaire – in French). Most of them accept the 300-euro but come back in France some months later.