rights violations occurring inside detention centres throughout Greece. More than 10 years, since I first entered the field, very little has changed in the way that people are treated inside the country’s detention facilities. The analysis in this thesis is the culmination of my previous experiences. Yet, as I mention above, this is an unfinished roadmap and, below, I reflect upon the space that I hope this thesis can open, that of imagining a radical alternative. Thinking about the research Saidiya Hartman (1997) opens her groundbreaking book ‘Scenes of Subjection’ by referring to the ‘terrible spectacle’ that introduced Frederick Douglass to slavery. This was the beating of his aunt, which he vividly recounts in his book ‘Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, An American slave’. When I read this, it made me wonder about the ‘terrible spectacle’ that introduced me to immigration detention. Was it the first time I entered the field in 2011? Or the first time the airport door cells opened and I saw 12 men lying on top of each other? Or the first time I witnessed ill-treatment? While in this thesis I refer to many brutal scenes I experienced or saw, that could act as my introduction to the horror of immigration detention in my country, in reality, my moment of the terrible spectacle did not come until much later in the PhD process. Looking back on my project, it is striking how different the final product is compared to the original plan. Although researchers strive for rigour and accuracy, research projects are rarely linear and straightforward. Indeed, ethnography is a practice that evolves in design as the research progresses. Similar to the PhD experience of Dominic Aitken (2019), who describes the path from his initial questions to the final write up as winding and diversionary, and much in line with most qualitative research that is characterised as emergent (Mason 2002) or iterative and inductive (O’Reilly, 2012b), the research questions that guided my writing were developed largely through speaking to people and observing them, as well as informal conversations about the research project that I could have included in the initial research proposal. As O’Reilly writes, ‘one of the beauties of ethnographic research is that as you learn you ask more questions, and as you ask more questions you learn different things that send you off in different directions’ (2012b: 183-184). This continual reflexivity and flexibility about my experiences in the field caused me to rethink my approach, my attitudes 42