Figure 1: Location of Poros facility in Northern Greece (source: openstreetmap.org)
tion, 2013a) and EU official documents (European Parliament, 2012; European Migration Network, 2013), reports by the EU’s Fundamental Rights
Agency (2011), NGOs (Pro Asyl, 2012) and activists (CloseTheCamps, 2012),
media articles (To Vima, 2012) and research (Düvell, 2012; Schaub, 2013)
between 2011 and 2015.
Yet, during our fieldwork in the area in 2018, none of our respondents
mentioned it. Nor could we find any recent research, reports or official
documents after 2015 referring to it. It was only a tip from someone we
collaborate with that reminded us of the existence of the Poros facility.
We found its ‘disappearance’ from public view intriguing. Through fieldwork, document analysis and queries to the Greek authorities, we constructed a genealogy of the Poros centre, from its inception in 2011 to its
ambivalent present. Our findings not only highlight the shifting nature
of local assemblages of the European border regime, but also raise questions on such ‘hidden’ infrastructures, and the implications of their use
for the rights of the people who cross the border.
A genealogy of Poros
The Poros centre was originally a military facility, used for border surveillance. In 2012, it was transferred to the Hellenic Police, the civilian author2