geographers have also explored detention centres as part of what they call the border assemblage (Pillant, 2017; Pillant and Tassin, 2016). In addition, there is a considerable quantity of reports produced by NGOs and human rights organisations (Amnesty International, 2010a; 2012a; CPT, 1994-2020; Global Detention Project, 2020; 2021; Human Rights Watch, 2008; 2011; Medicins Sans Frontieres, 2010; 2014, Pro Asyl, 2007; 2012). In lack of academic scrutiny, I have extensively drawn on these reports, especially in the first chapters, where I address the early years of detention, because they are rich in detailed descriptions of the conditions inside immigration detention centres. In this way, they offer a glimpse into largely hidden and forgotten infrastructures. Unlike in other countries,15 there are very few journalistic accounts of the situation inside the country’s detention facilities. Those which exist mostly cover riots from the inside, thus reproducing an image of detainees as dangerous, or use information they have gathered from secondary sources about human rights violations. As one journalist told me ‘There is no interest in detention. There is a small segment of the public that wants to learn about human rights violations.’ (Interview, Athens, 2018). The same person, though, told me that he had never made any attempts to enter a detention centre. In fact, the only way some of these journalists have been able to access three sites of confinement is through covering visits organised by the human rights committee of the left-wing party, Syriza, in the lead-up to the 2015 elections. Media reports from Amygdaleza from that period contribute to what Cetta Mainwaring and Stephanie Silverman (2017, p. 34) term as ‘detention as spectacle,’ which at the same time ‘makes visible and renders invisible, it perpetuates myths and creates distance between people and reality, and between citizens and noncitizens.’ Notwithstanding the importance of exposing the situation inside detention centres, the time-sensitive access these journalists had, and the conspicuous silence of the media before and after that period created a short-lived political spectacle that was easily deflated. What the limited academic scholarship and NGO and media reports share, though, is that to a large extent they focus on border detention sites, entirely overlooking what happens inside other facilities in the mainland. Notable exceptions are a collective brochure by In the UK, for example, there has been a number of uncover documentary videos secretly filmed from inside the centres. See Channel4, 2015a; 2015b and BBC Panorama, 2020. See also Silverman (2015). 15 24