Chapter 1: Witnessing immigration detention I have always been fascinated by confinement. How do people end up in prison? What happens to them while there? How do they feel? These were thorny philosophical questions I was trying to answer from a very young age. Yet, a lifelong fascination and a great number of books cannot prepare you for the first time you wait outside the high cement walls of a prison, hearing the heavy metal doors unlocking to let you in. I will never forget the fear, the shock, and the knot in my stomach and throat that practically prevented me from speaking, as if I was realising that what I was doing was a life-defining moment. That first time was when, in my final year as an undergraduate student in Greece in 2004, I volunteered at an NGO art project,17 which involved visiting the only prison for women in the country weekly.18 Since then, I have spent almost my entire professional life visiting, studying and working inside custodial facilities in a number of countries, but mainly focusing on my native Greece. In this chapter I outline the methodological trails and challenges of more than ten years of ongoing commitment with the field of immigration detention in Greece in different roles. Guided by a ‘methodological self-consciousness’ (Finlay, 2002: 210), this chapter is also a reflexive attempt at exploring the impact of my positionality and the research dynamics of a long-term approach. While I refer to many brutal scenes throughout the thesis, this chapter seeks to identify the ways I participated in or witnessed those scenes. To do so, I draw on the work of Emma Kaufman (2015), who framed her ethnography of all-foreign national prisons in England as an act of witnessing. I also draw on work from other authors such as Aleida Assmann (2006) and Annette Wieviorka (2006), who present witnessing as a distinct form of narrative, which privileges a subjective notion of truth. By analysing a decade of involvement with detention issues, I do not claim an insider’s perspective of detention facilities in Greece. Rather, following feminist critique, I seek to show that the way we represent our field depends not so much on what is objectively happening in it but on our relationships in it (Harding, 1993; McAllister Groves and Chang, 1999; Phillips and The art project was carried out by the NGO Arsis and it was a handicraft workshop, which aimed to give the opportunity for creative expression. The work created by the women was then exhibited at charity bazaars and the proceeds went to the women’s accounts. NGO Arsis has been implementing this project since 2002. 18 The location of the only prison for women back then was in Korydallos, a western suburb of Athens. It was opposite the men’s prison, which is the largest prison establishment in the country. The women were transferred to the Eleonas prison for women in 2008. The facility in Korydallos serves for detaining remand prisoners. 17 36