meant that people and means had to be taken away from other operations, such as regular policing. Moreover, the delays in organising the accommodation facilities, in combination with the extended, under problematic conditions, stay of a large number of diverse individuals, with completely different habits and needs, led to the inflation of violent behaviour phenomena, especially among the third-country nationals themselves, creating a fertile ground for the violent involvement of local bigoted individuals or groups. The feeling of insecurity in a social system suffering anyway from an economic crisis, is easy to emerge, quick to grow, and self-fuelled in an almost organic manner. And this is particularly the case, when the State has no cohesive narrative to provide for explanations and guarantees. Moreover, the Administration’s failures, such as the creation or maintenance of initially temporary and ultimately “semi-temporary” accommodation facilities, sometimes literally under the balconies and next to the stores of the permanent residents, did nothing to help in mitigating the conflicts which were erupting increasingly frequently, since no solution was anticipated for the immediate future. To the contrary, they intensified the pressures from the side of the local public opinion towards the State for immediate measures of suppression, liberty deprivation and removal initially of the “trouble-makers” and then, “preventively”, of everyone. When the deficiencies in the infrastructures and the failures in the planning create a feeling of insecurity in a large part of the local community, then the calls for immediate measures will soon start to question the core of human rights and the rule of law. The problematic, due to the financial crisis, situation of public health on the islands and the mainland, and the serious shortages in doctors, nurses and infrastructure, was exacerbated by the rapid increase of the demand for health services, due to the arrival of migrants/ refugees. This caused a type of social engineering in the manner in which parts of the local community handled the newly arriving third-country nationals, since part of the Press and local agencies did not hesitate some times to openly adopt an intolerant rhetoric, supporting discrimination practices based on origin and nationality. At the same time, this exact effort to informally exclude these third-country nationals from the local health services, in combination with the difficult access to a hospital due to distance, gave rise to the scared or conservative parts of the local community to consider all new arrivals as a risk to Health public health, despite the assurances of the experts to the contrary. It is characteristic that in 2015 in Kos, a coordinator of an international NGO of doctors was assuring a team from the Ombudsman that the third-country nationals were arriving on the island healthy and were falling ill there due to the lack of infrastructure and the inability to access adequate health services. After the informal Balkan Route was closed, when it became clear that the refugees/migrants would be forced to stay in Greece much longer than a few days, we see a reaction of the local community to the effort to integrate the children of these third-country nationals into education. It is telling that, despite the choice - at least as a transitional stage - of a parallel system of educational integration,218 that keeps the children outside the daily school operation, despite also the vaccination of these children and the extensive information that preceded, negative and xenophobic attitudes of citizens were recorded, at different decrees of intensity and gravity, focused mainly due to the lack of any other contact of the locals with the foreign children - to the fear for the transmission of diseases. Education The first contacts of the newly arriving populations, mainly to the islands, were with members of the civil society and the so-called NGOs. Individuals and groups were involved and continue to be dynamically involved, both during the entry stage (rescue, first aid, clothing, food, health care), and in the next stages (meeting the needs and shortages in relation to food and clothing, access to health services, legal representation, accommodation, etc.). Arrival and stay on the islands, as well as areas of the mainland, of volunteers from many different countries had a mainly positive impact on the local community and its members. Such examples are the initiatives of unaccompanied minor facilities to reach out to the local communities, the joint actions and participation in events for familiarisation with the culture and strengthening of the ties (e.g. participation of children in island festivals with hand-made delicacies of their country of origin, which they offered to the public accompanied with a written message, invitation of the neighbourhood residents by minors in a facility to a meal prepared by the children themselves, painting by children on a neighbourhood street with the consent of the residents, organisation of friendly sports games with participation of children from facilities). Civil society 218 See Chapter C2. 71