but rather I want to show the continuity of harmful policies across time and space (Fili, 2016). Having examined the underlying principles of the Greek detention system and having established that the culture of violence nurtured inside it, is endemic, chapters 4 and 5, explain how these extreme forms of violence have been normalised. By connecting detention centres to the world outside them, I highlight the role of other actors in keeping the detention system knitted together; thus, contributing to the fortification of a detention industrial complex. The final chapter engages with the theme of resistance and seeks to show how police practices are shaped in response to resistance inside and outside detention centres. Chapter 1 ‘Witnessing Immigration Detention’, offers a reflexive account of my experiences as a researcher and NGO practitioner in the field of immigration detention in Greece. It sums up my ethnographic journey over a decade, alluding to challenges I have faced in accessing obscure facilities and state institutions and also reflecting on my positionalities and the effect they have had in the production of knowledge. In doing so, it serves as a roadmap for reading and understanding the range of data presented throughout the thesis and my approach to analysis. Chapter 2 ‘The Hidden History of Immigration Detention in Greece (1990-2010)’, traces the roots of the Greek immigration detention system. The few accounts of detention in Greece take the years after 2010 as a starting point, when the policy of detraining foreigners acquired key meaning in border control in the country. The period before has been largely overlooked in the literature. This chapter breaks this narrative and draws out hidden accounts of the practices and actors that laid the foundations upon which the immigration detention system of today has been built. In doing so, it will situate current practice in a longer historical context of immigration and border control policies in Greece and Europe. Given the lack of available information about this era, I draw extensively on reports by human rights organisations and the CPT, which contain rich information about life inside detention facilities. Interweaved in the analysis are interviews I have conducted with police officers that have served at the border during those early years. My main argument is that nationalism in Greek political culture, or the historical depths of the ultra-right’s intrusion into the Greek state established the legal and institutional basis for today’s detention regime. 32