Caroline Baudry, edited by Loane Nader // photo credit: Ibrahim Ezzat / ANADOLU AGENCY / Anadolu Agency via AFP 08:10, September 19, 2023

About ten kilometers from Menton, near the Italian border, the authorities are preparing to open a "space" of one hundred places dedicated to "temporary detention" if a large number of migrants try to enter illegally in France. Europe 1 went to meet these people who try to enter France at all costs.

Near the Italian border with the France, in Ventimiglia in Italy, a city located about ten kilometers from Menton, the checkpoint faces the arrival of a dozen migrants determined to cross the border. Determined, it is the state of mind of Lamine who aims to take a train to the France. Accompanied by his wife, this Guinean sleeps on the steps of the station and arrived in Lampedusa via Tunisia. They now both live hanging on the announcements that come out of the speakers. "As soon as the train returns, arrives from the France, we will return to the station to pass in France. There is freedom there, there is money there. I will look for my future."

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"The goal of going to France"

Not far from them, 19-year-old Baccarat hugs her baby with a plastic sheeting as her only shelter. Also Guinean, she refuses to give her fingerprints to Italian authorities, she says, to apply for asylum in France. "The goal is to go to France, Italy doesn't." Baccarat hopes to succeed in crossing the border, although the authorities are discouraging: "The Italian police, the French also say no. Many times, even everyone there here. They say, 'If they get to the border, the French will turn them back.'

And no matter which police roam and push back at the borders, every day is synonymous with a new attempt to set foot in France, a few kilometers away.