the increased difficulty of gaining access to the population of asylum seekers, stemming from the latter’s residing in mostly closed, detention-type accommodation facilities (especially, Pre-Removal Centers).144 Similarly, islanders’ fatigue on the matter should not be underestimated. Notwithstanding some small, ephemeral, improvements,145 the situation at the borders has largely remained the same for the past two years and, simply put, persons who might have previously been wholeheartedly engaged in the mass solidarity movement of 2015, have become tired with what has become an established and unchanging situation of mistreatment of asylum seekers, with no essential signs of changing in site. “I see people who are very friendly towards [refugees] changing because they cannot take it anymore…they cannot handle [the situation].”146 Most worryingly, and in this context, the very foundations for changing attitudes towards refugees and asylum seekers, ever reinforced by inter alia the changing media and political discourse following the Statement’s implementation (terms such as “migrants” gradually replacing those of “refugees”, with the usual negative effects that such replacement has in terms of considerations of persons’ legitimate right to arrive in Europe),147 result in a cocktail of rising xenophobia and enmity. Or in any case, perhaps not so much rising xenophobia, as much as an increasing opening of the space for such sentiments and acts to manifest themselves in the public sphere. "You have a society in a state of fatigue...at least in terms of solidarity... [thereby] it is easy for this fatigue to become something else... [it is in this context that various] others start penetrating [the public sphere]”148 This becomes especially the case in light of the tensions, riots, and sporadic acts of delinquency (e.g. stealing) exhibited by small proportions of the RICs’ population, whom though largely attributable to their ongoing state of confinement, still increasingly become the primary means through which locals at the borders and Greece, more broadly, become aware of asylum seekers’ presence. Put simply, when the primary means for getting to know this “Other” diminish from daily interactions to frequent news on tensions, riots and more broadly violence –even in islands where such tensions have been relatively few, such as Kos, they still constitute sporadic emanations of persons’ frustrations149– then seeing said “Other” as a danger, becomes an ever-present, even if not actually representative of the population of asylum seekers, risk. “The problem is that through this [situation], the far-right presents itself as vindicated … i.e. “we told you so”…and as long as people [on the island] are pressured, on the one hand they gradually lose the arguments to counter them [i.e. far right groups], and on the other, some become [convinced by them].”150 43