Calais has attracted the attention of numerous scholars since it emerged as a key
European migration pressure point in the early 1990s. Yet in-depth discussions relating to
the experiences of displaced women at this border remain rare. This article draws on my
unexpected experience of spending 3 months in lockdown with border-crossing women in
Calais when the field research I had been carrying out with (predominantly male) people
living in makeshift camps at the border was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic in March
2020. Drawing on the work of feminist geographers I conceptualise the northern French
border as avirilisedspace, where policing that imposes harsh living
conditions at the border reinforces male subjectivities and exacerbates gender-based
exclusion and violence. Drawing on ethnographic insights from this intimate period of
living together, I then detail how lockdown prompted the women I was living with to
renegotiate this terrain with physical proximity to their male counterparts ruled out. I
argue that the role of domestic space changed during this period, from one of hindrance to
the mobility of the female body to one of strategic potential. In the light of these
findings, I propose a conceptualisation of the lockdown period as a moment of retreat and
rupture that facilitated these women’s engagement instrategic
intersectionality, drawing on their unique positions as a small but diverse
group to endure crisis and negotiate opportunities to reach the United Kingdom.