382 Social & Legal Studies 34(3) Introduction Curfews are measures that restrict individuals to their homes during specified times, usually in the evening and night. They have a long history and are a traditional method of imposing social control (see, e.g. Collins and Kearns, 2001; Freitas, 1996; Hazen and Brank, 2018; Jordan, 1993; Smith, 2012), as they ‘seek to mould the behaviour of targeted individuals’ (Johnsen et al., 2018). Throughout history, as Freitas notes, in addition to being used as an emergency measure, for example during wartime or pandemics, ‘curfews have been enacted when powerful factions of society perceive the imminent loss of control over less powerful citizens. Each time the members of a group lacking any substantial power and rights become the scapegoats’ (Freitas, 1996: 219). Similarly, Jordan observes that the ‘curfew could be viewed as an explicit attempt to impose some form of social control over the group that is least likely to succeed’ (Jordan, 1993). Curfews form part of a trend in liberal democracies to increasingly exclude people from public space, in order to deal with (future) crime, anti-social behaviour and political protest (Beckett and Herbert, 2009; Moeckli, 2016; Sylvestre et al., 2020). A specific characteristic of curfews is that they usually prohibit the mere presence of certain categories of people in any part of public space, independent of their behaviour and on a permanent basis (Moeckli, 2016: 102–114). In the US for example, prior to the abolition of slavery in 1865, curfews prohibited enslaved persons from being on the streets after a certain time, and as from the mid-1890s, more and more cities enacted juvenile curfews, prohibiting children from being on the streets after a certain time. These latter curfews were imposed as a means to protect and control unsupervised and neglected juveniles, and, during the 20th century, to combat juvenile (gang) crimes (Freitas, 1996; Hazen and Brank, 2018). Also in Europe, juvenile curfews have become increasingly common (Moeckli, 2016: 87). For example, Iceland has juvenile curfews to reduce teen drinking (VOA News Learning English, 2019), and in France juvenile curfews may be adopted by prefectures or municipalities if the public place present a risk to the health, safety, education and mental development of a young person during night time (Federal Association of Child and Youth Protection, 2012). Curfews are also used to target other categories of people. For example, curfews for persons who were not vaccinated for COVID-19, enacted in some German districts in 2021 (Mercopress, 2021), and curfews enacted in towns that are mainly Kurdish by the Turkish authorities (VOA News, 2016). This article deals with another prominent current example: the curfew imposed on asylum seekers who are contained in reception centres for asylum seekers on Greek islands. As the EU entirely finances these centres, they serve as a blueprint for the future of the reception of asylum seekers in the EU. This is in line with the newly adopted recast of the Reception Conditions Directive (Directive (EU) 2024/1346), which introduces ‘more targeted restrictions to the applicants’ freedom of movement and strict consequences when such restrictions are not complied with’ (European Commission, 2016), and with the new Asylum Procedures Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2024/1348) with its broader reliance on border procedures and containment of asylum seekers at the border (Wessels, 2023). Critical scrutiny of the measures in these centres is, therefore, important.