160 Jutta Lauth Bacas en by the Greek Council for Refugees, before Pagani was temporarily closed, it was common practice that babies and minors receive this expulsion order too, attached to the expulsion order of the family member they were accompanying.38 Since the literal ruling is always of importance, it is interesting to reveal the by-effect of the expulsion order: in Greece, the expelled is asked to leave the country after thirty days, a period during which the illegally present person is allowed to make arrangement for a voluntary departure to a country of his or her choice(!). In practical terms this means that by the expulsion order the undocumented migrant is been granted a moratorium of one month to be present in the country in a grey zone between legality and illegality of residence (Lauth Bacas 2006: 130). In other words, together with the expulsion order, the Greek authorities grant a status of some sort where the undocumented migrant moves out of the black zone of detention into a grey zone of space to move and to manoeuvre. A third step of the ethnographic analysis is to document what happens in Mytilini to boat people after they have received this detention order. As participant observation shows, the boat migrants are allowed to leave the island and continue their journey to mainland Greece. The vital point in the present system of managing irregular migration of third-country nationals in Greece is that they are de iure expelled and de facto set free (Lauth Bacas 2006: 108). In the case of Lesbos, the majority of the boat people who arrive on the island clandestinely do not stay on the island longer than several days, and move on to the capital as soon as possible. This observation is confirmed by official data: In 2008, for example, a total of 13 252 boat people arrived on Lesbos, including families with small children and babies, unaccompanied minors and other vulnerable persons. But only 25 of them decided to lodge an asylum application in Mytilini, with the result that they were asked to stay on the island until a final decision could be reached. Maybe because of this ruling, the majority prefers not to ask for political asylum in Mytilini at all and to maintain the option of moving on to mainland Greece.39 Participant observation shows that boat migrants usually move on directly to the port where they embark on the next available ferry leaving the island – often boarding the boat under the eyes of the coast guard who arrested them a few days or weeks earlier. Quite remarkably, the boat people’s trips from the Turkish coast to mainland Greece consist of two parts: the first is a short voyage crossing the maritime strait between Turkey and Lesbos, which is clandestine and expensive, and requires payment of between one and three thousand dollars 38 39 Personal conversation with Spyros Koulocheris, Head of the Legal Department of the Greek Council for Refugees, Athens, on 10/11/2008. Data provided by the regional police authorities in Mytilini.