section. While I do not let the data speak for itself, the theoretical discussion does emerge from data collected. To avoid repetition and overlap, below, I frame the contribution of the thesis around a broad international interdisciplinary body of scholarship on immigration confinement but the individual chapters develop and discuss the key concepts I am engaging with. As I will show, my positionalities, research practices and engagement with the literature cross boundaries. Immigration detention in Greek literature Back in 2011, I was the first researcher to be able to conduct research inside immigration detention centres in Greece (see Bosworth et al., 2016; 2018). Then I was told, ‘There is a literature gap, which is a serious matter in itself. It [Immigration detention] is the definition of black hole. It’s the exclusion inside the exclusion [of migration]’ (Interview with a practitioner and independent researcher, 2018). After 2012, when immigration detention attracted more attention from the inside and outside of the country as the locus of severe human rights violations, there has been more academic interest. Against this context, studies relying on secondary data (Cheliotis, 2013; Angeli & Triandafyllidou, 2014; Triandafyllidou, Angeli, & Dimitriadi, 2014; Mantanika, 2014) provide a fruitful picture about the nature and effect of detention centres, but in their predominant theoretical bent and limited or no access to those inside the centres, these studies remain rather limited. A more comprehensive picture of detention comes from authors who have themselves witnessed immigration detention as NGO practitioners; thus, offering an insider’s perspective but also alluding to the challenges that humanitarian actors face inside detention settings (Georgoulas and Sarantidis, 2012; Fili, 2018b; Iliadou, 2012; 2019a; Kotsioni, 2016; Sarantidis, 2018). The investigative research work of Lena Karamanidou and Bernd Kasparek in the Evros region has provided considerable wisdom, insight and data about border control practices, their inherent violence and the link between immigration detention and the practice of pushbacks in the country (Karamanidou and Kasparek, 2020). Moreover, during Karamanidou’s long-term fieldwork in Evros, she has produced many images of official and unofficial detention facilities, illustrating how the governance of borders relies on assemblages of both formal and informal practices and infrastructures (Karamanidou and Kasparek, 2018; Karamanidou et al., 2021). Critical 23