726 European Journal of Criminology 10(6) European Union level, particularly with reference to irregular migrants. But few, if any, countries in Europe have concerned themselves with immigration and have found themselves at the epicentre of pertinent international attention as much as Greece. In good part, this has been due to the fact that Greece’s extensive coastal and mainland borders with Turkey are the main point of entry for irregular migration in the EU, hence also the exceptionally large numbers of migrants entering the country clandestinely. Indeed, although irregular migration into the EU as a whole has dropped in recent years, entries into Greece have grown to constitute the large majority of detected illegal border crossings into the continent (see e.g. FRONTEX, 2010). Additionally, however, immigration in Greece has increasingly been debated in terms of how immigrants are treated in the country, with several domestic and especially international actors levelling heavy and sustained criticism against the Greek state for what they commonly describe as its unjust, inhumane and degrading policies and practices towards immigrant populations. Central to this debate have been the excessive use and harsh conditions of administrative detention of irregular migrants in Greece. Bringing together material from a range of sources in both Greek and English, from official documentation by government and independent actors to media reports and scholarly research, this article sets out to offer a systematic summary of the policies, practices and experiences of immigration detention in Greece, as well as outlining how they have been critiqued domestically and internationally. Against this background, the article proceeds to shift the focus to the ways in which the Greek state has reacted to criticisms and pressures for reform, especially from abroad. State reactions to such interventions have remained relatively understudied to date, whether in relation to Greece or other jurisdictions. Scholarly research has been mainly preoccupied either with the scope and validity of criticisms as such or the specific structure and operations of the institutions that raise them (e.g. inspectorate and judicial bodies). Much less is known about the nature of reactions from the states concerned, the forces that determine them and their respective influence on the effectiveness of censures (for partial exceptions see Cornelisse, 2010; De Genova and Peutz, 2010; Wilsher, 2012).1 Greece readily lends itself as a case study through which to advance understanding of these issues, given both the variety and intensity of criticisms the country has received of late. This article finds that neither domestic nor international pressure have succeeded in bringing about substantive progressive change in the Greek immigration detention system. As is shown, Greek state authorities have systematically neutralised criticisms by employing an array of rhetorical techniques, most notably through evocation of national heritage in the form of both direct and indirect claims that Greeks are the philoxenous people par excellence, descended straight from the ancient Hellenes of the days of Xenios Zeus, the god of hospitality to foreigners and strangers more generally. In addition to highlighting the dubious and paradoxical dimensions of the rhetorical defences deployed by the state in Greece, particularly concerning its discourse of philoxenia, the article goes on to briefly address the main socio-political functions that have subtly been served inside the country’s borders through maintenance of unjust and inhumane policies and practices of immigration detention. These functions have ranged from facilitating the sustenance of a vast exploitable labour pool, in line with what is referred to in pertinent Anglophone literature as the ‘less eligibility’ principle, to allowing for the symbolic Downloaded from euc.sagepub.com at Oxford University Libraries on November 25, 2013