What kind of people live in a jungle? Are they civilised? Are they respectable? Do they share our values?

Chances are, your image of a jungle dweller ranges from the savages and headshrinkers of the old Tarzan-era movies to – if you’re more 21st-century – the isolated peoples of the rainforest, living simple yet dignified lives. In either case, are they the kind of people you’d welcome as neighbours, and believe could fully integrate into modern Britain?

Calais 'Jungle' camp: clashes as authorities demolish homes Read more

For several years now, the series of Calais refugee camps originally set up in 2002 have been referred to as “the Jungle”. The camp was christened by the migrants themselves, in ironic reference to the squalid conditions.

But a decade on, and as the migrant crisis throughout Europe has escalated, it’s clear this term is becoming increasingly problematic. What started out as a simple in-joke among a small group of people has taken on a completely different meaning when taken up by the international media in the context of daily scare stories about people crossing borders.

“War of the Jungle” and “Jungle warfare” were just two of the headlines splashed across tabloid front pages last week, as French authorities clashed with refugees as they moved in to demolish their homes. The imagery the headlines evoke is of primitive, uncontrolled brutes – of the barbarians at the gates, as they try to gain entry to the UK. Who could possibly want these kind of people tarnishing our green and pleasant land?

The language obscures the stories of people who may be teachers, traders, clerical workers, their lives thrown into conflict, who, after battling across the continent to find a better life, find themselves in this unfortunate place.

The Middle Eastern origins of many Calais refugees play into other stereotypes too. Every day, it seems, as stories abound about terror, grooming, the Cologne attacks and FGM, we appear to be developing a fear of a Muslim planet. It’s as if every individual with an Arab background is a potential threat to us: again, primitive, uncivilised, untrustworthy.

The dark imagery of the jungle is not a relic from the past

Over time, the media’s use of this terminology has changed. First it was, “the migrant camps, known by some as ‘the Jungle’”; then “the so-called ‘Jungle’”; before simply becoming the Jungle, without quotation marks.

It’s not just the rightwing tabloids that use the term: all parts of the media have adopted it – including the Independent, the BBC and the Guardian (although last week the Guardian issued new guidance to limit its usage, and ensure it always appears in quotation marks). Even the organisation Help Refugees, which donates essential supplies to camps at Calais and Dunkirk, uses the social media hashtag #CalaisJungle.

The dark imagery of the jungle is not a relic from the past. Only last November the Daily Mail’s chief cartoonist, Mac, used spears, severed heads and topless tribeswomen to illustrate a “joke” about black ancestry.

This dehumanising of outsiders has a long history. Whenever ethnic conflicts flare up across the vast continent of Africa, they are invariably labelled “tribal”, as if the warring factions still throw spears and live in mud huts. It’s a quick way to explain away the causes – “they do this because they are savages” – rather than trying to find the real reasons: political, economic, or historic.

Contrast this with the brutality in Europe when the Balkan wars flared up, claiming well over 100,000 lives. The Bosnians, the Serbs and the Croats were never called “tribes”, and the conflict was placed in the context of the Cold War, old allegiances, and competing nationalisms.

Ignoring people’s history and distorting their stories only serves to increase misunderstanding and mistrust when, for all our sakes, we should be doing the opposite. Whether or not you believe the residents of the Calais refugee camp should be allowed into Britain, anyone who thinks these people are fully human, with hopes and aspirations like the rest of us, and lives just as valuable, should cease using language that denies them this humanity.