a geopolitical role for the region as a buffer zone against which (Western) Europe could be protected against this “incursion”’ (Tyler, 2018, p. 1787). This, of course, stands in stark opposition to Germany’s open-door policy, which allowed for millions of refugees fleeing from wars in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan to seek refuge there. Nevertheless, despite the approach EU states took towards migration based on their capacity, as well as their ethnonationalist agenda (Tyler, 2017), they all agreed that Greece was responsible to stop the flow, thus, should be assisted to control or interrupt people’s mobility. Drawing on this, the European Commission developed the idea of the ‘hotspot approach’ (European Commission, n.d.). The aim was to help slow the flow of migrants heading to the north, and mitigate security risks by swiftly identifying, registering, and fingerprinting all arrivals in Italy and Greece, as hotspots were considered key to securing the EU’s external borders (European Commission, 2016c; see also ECRE, 2016 and Papoutsi et al., 2019). Furthermore, in late January, the EU gave Greece yet another ultimatum to stop migrants crossing from Turkey, or else the country would be banned from the borderless Schengen area (European Commission, 2016b). Austria and several Balkan countries were determined to stop migrants passing through by building rows of fences, and FYROM sealed its southern border with Greece. With the end of the wavethrough approach, thousands of migrants were stranded in Greece.75 Amid EU pressure to deal with mass mobility, and with just few of the resources pledged by the EU actually coming through, the available evidence shows that confinement and detention were once again employed as an ‘accommodation strategy’ for the rising number of refugees and migrants. In the beginning of 2016, the Greek government started detaining nationals of North African countries followed by nationals of Pakistan and Bangladesh, separating once more between bona fide refugees and economic migrants (AITIMA, 2016). Papada et al. (2020) write about this new security regime that popped up on the islands. ‘This regime was based on the assumption that belonging to a nationality with a low rate in the recognition of asylum applications was prima facie evidence of an attempt to abuse the asylum system.’ (Papada et al., 2020, p. 1040; see also Benson, 2019) At the same time, the authorities started to arrest nationals of other countries, including Afghans, holding expired police documents. In a just a few months, the number of It is important to note that the borders for nationalities other than Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis closed on December 2015 and the borders for Afghans closed on February 2016. 75 117