When Habib* made the journey from Dunkirk, France, to Dover, England, in a small dingy, he feared he would die. The 29-year-old compares the trip across the English Channel – one of the most dangerous, and busiest, shipping lanes in the world – to gambling with his life.
Habib’s experience has echoes of a scenario most people will only ever encounter in the pitch-black of their bedrooms, when they awake from a nightmare, covered in sweat at a dreamt-up scenario. But Habib had no duvet to return to after he was besieged by three-metre waves out at sea. This was his reality. All he had were two buckets, which he and 35 passengers – the youngest of whom was 12 – used to desperately try and stop the seawater flooding in. “The border force came and they saved our lives,” says Habib, who is from Afghanistan. “It was very, very hard. It’s been four years and even now, when I’m remembering that time, I’m scared when I’m sleeping.”
His story also reflects the powerful themes explored in Small Boat by Vincent Delecroix – Dua’s Monthly Read for July. Vincent’s book dives deep into a journey not dissimilar to Habib’s – the perilous crossings across the Channel, capturing the human cost behind the headlines. It shines an uncomfortable spotlight on the part of the story we never see – the brutal consequences of what happens at sea when it goes wrong. Because, of course, Habib’s journey is not unique. Nearly 20,000 people arrived in the UK in the first half of this year by crossing the English Channel in small boats – up 48% on the first six months of 2024. The UN’s International Organization for Migration’s Missing Migrants Project recorded the highest number of deaths and missing persons in the Channel in 2024. As many as 82 people died, and as many as 14 were children – although officials believe the true figures are likely to be higher in reality.
Sonia Lambert, stories officer at Refugee Council, notes striking similarities in the firsthand accounts she hears. “Everyone who survives crossing the channel talks about how traumatic it was,” she tells me. “People are really terrified. They have been very close to death. A lot of people talk about crying and praying in the boat.” Sonia, who has spoken with many refugees arriving in the UK via small boats, explains that smugglers force people to navigate the crossing themselves, offering only vague instructions, like, “Follow those ships, they are going to England.” She adds that people often get lost, a situation that is immensely dangerous.
“People talk about being totally drenched with seawater during the journey, being covered in fuel and being freezing cold – some have developed hypothermia, and sometimes die as a result of being crushed or drowning,” she says. “Often, they are picked up by the coast guard or border force once they are in British waters. When they first arrive on British soil in Dover, they are in shock and sometimes can’t speak due to trauma.”
She warns that separated children – often between 14 and 17 – arrive on small boats without their families, only to face Home Office officials who doubt their age. “This means they go into detention or adult asylum hotels where they are at risk of exploitation, abuse and neglect,” Sonia says. “Young people should go into care.” She stresses that people only risk their lives crossing the Channel because they are fleeing immediate danger at home. “I’ve spoken to a lot of people who have arrived on small boats – they come from Sudan, Eritrea, Afghanistan, Syria and Iran, and there are a lot of Kurdish people, too.”
It goes without saying that Habib’s treacherous journey to the UK did not begin in the dingy he was in. His trip from Afghanistan to the UK was plagued with trepidation, terror, and tragedy. Habib left the capital of Kabul in 2021 just before the Taliban seized control of the country after the fall of Kabul in August 2021. He had been working for a development and education organisation that published schoolbooks for Afghan children. The Taliban had made threats to kill him because of the work he did.
He describes a harrowing four-month journey from Afghanistan to the UK, paid for through a human smuggler. Along the way, he narrowly escaped death multiple times. In one terrifying incident, border guards released dogs on him and his group – five people were caught and bitten. In another, soldiers opened fire as he crossed the border illegally. At one point, he was refused even a sip of water by police, while nearby, horses and dogs were being kept hydrated. “For weeks, we did not have anything to drink,” he says. “We did not have anything to eat. We ate leaves.” Habib also tells of men behaving like animals as they aggressively pushed as many as 15 people into a five-seater car.
He finally made it to the UK after his treacherous journey crossing the English Channel. Unsurprisingly, life here has taken some getting used to. “In the first year it was a lot of stress,” he says. “When I didn’t have documents, I didn’t feel like I was part of this community. The government didn’t allow us to work.”
But things have slowly improved. He has since been granted refugee status and is living in London working in construction. He hopes his two daughters and his wife will soon be able to join him in the UK, but until then he worries about them living under the Taliban’s brutal regime. “Some people in the UK are racist and some people don’t understand our situation,” he says. “If my country was not dangerous for me and we had rights in Afghanistan, I would never leave.”
“Some people don’t understand our situation. If my country was not dangerous for me and we had rights in Afghanistan, I would never leave”
Jonathan Featonby, chief policy analyst at Refugee Council, points to the lack of safe, legal routes for asylum seekers trying to get to the UK. These are limited to specific nationalities and dedicated schemes, such as the Ukrainian visa programme, as well as the Afghan resettlement programme for those who were at risk when the Taliban seized control of the country. There is also the UK’s refugee resettlement scheme, run in partnership with the UN refugee agency, but the number of people granted asylum tends to be in the low thousands each year.
Jonathan says that one government after another has brought in new laws to try to stop people from reaching the UK by small boat – including by working with the French authorities to increase border enforcement across the Channel. “The current government have still put in place policies which are doing things such as limiting the ability for people who have arrived on small boats, or through other dangerous journeys, to be able to get British citizenship, even if they have been recognised as refugees.”
And yet, he maintains that efforts to make the journey across the English Channel harder have not deterred people – instead, they’ve pushed them to take even greater risks. “When a route is shut off, it doesn’t stop that desire for people to try and reach the UK safely,” he says. “It doesn’t stop the demand for those smuggling gangs. It just means that those smuggling gangs use whatever boats they can get access to, which now seem to be far flimsier boats, and they are also packing more people onto those boats than they were before.” The result, he adds, is beyond grim: “In recent years, we have seen the number of deaths increase.”
He also argues there is a clear moral responsibility – on both the UK and French governments – to make the journey across the Channel as safe as possible. “Make sure that search and rescue teams and other measures are in place to try and make it as safe as possible. There are legal duties on the two governments as well. It depends on exactly where the situation occurs, whether it’s in the French territorial waters or UK territorial waters.”
While small boats have only become the main route since 2019, refugees have long risked their lives trying to reach the UK by other, often hidden and dangerous, means – such as traveling in the backs of lorries. “The truth is that no meaningful safe routes exist for refugees to reach the UK and reunite with family members, so they are left with no choice but to take dangerous journeys,” says Nick Beales, Head of Campaigning at Refugee & Migrant Forum of Essex and London. “Rather than admit this, though, and focus on actually creating safe routes, politicians instead fan the flames of hate and then repeatedly act surprised when the general public feels apathy and anger towards refugees.”
He argues that refugees make up only a small fraction of those moving to the UK – yet senior politicians from both Conservative and Labour governments have deflected from their own failures by demonising them. In his view, they’ve treated a “modest number of arrivals” as if it were unprecedented and blamed them for the nation’s problems. This scapegoating, he says, has fuelled public hostility, encouraging struggling citizens to turn their frustration on the most vulnerable rather than those in power. “Until the UK’s leaders speak in kinder and more humane ways about our fellow human beings, it is inevitable that racists will feel emboldened to attack refugees and migrants, exactly like they did in summer 2024.”
When challenged on this criticism, a Home Office spokesperson defended the government’s stance, saying it is “taking steps to end dangerous small boat crossings, which threaten lives and undermine our border security, by dismantling people smugglers’ business models.” They added that the UK has a “proud history of providing protection to refugees” and continues to welcome people in need through “safe and legal routes”. The spokesperson also pointed to the recent Immigration White Paper, which includes new measures on refugee sponsorship and resettlement, with further details to come.
But these reassurances ring hollow to many. It’s almost a year since far-right, anti-immigrant violence exploded across the UK. A time which saw rioters attack mosques, ambush riot police and set alight a hotel housing migrants after the fatal stabbing of three young girls at a Taylor Swift-themed holiday club in Southport in Merseyside. The race riots followed another type of explosion: the rapid dissemination of false information spread rapidly online, inaccurately claiming the suspect was a Muslim asylum seeker who came to the UK in a small boat. The far-right violence reminds us of the dangerous repercussions which come from demonising and scapegoating migrants and ultimately the fact that words have consequences.
It’s why Habib’s journey is more than a story of survival – it’s a call to conscience. His ordeal underscores the urgent need to move beyond a politics of fear and to recognise the humanity behind every crossing. The path to justice lies not in closing doors or vilifying those seeking refuge, but in offering up solutions grounded in dignity, compassion, and shared responsibility. Only by confronting the root causes that force people like Habib to flee, and by creating real, safe alternatives, can we begin to build a future where no one must endure such peril to find sanctuary.
*Name has been changed to protect their identity
