transferred to another detention centre in the region of Attica, allegedly to help him feel better, as if the change in ‘scenery’ would diminish the violence of detention.120 I begin the chapter with this vignette as an illustrative example of the inherent complexity of resistance and its loose definition. Rose Weitz (2001), in her exploration of how women seek power through both resisting and accommodating mainstream norms for female hair, writes that resistance is so loosely defined that this has allowed researchers to find it either everywhere or nowhere. Manuel was, indeed, labelled by numerous individuals at different points during the incident. At first, and largely as a means to avoid dealing with him, the police disregarded his physical condition as unimportant. When they came to realise the repercussions of such actions, they signed off liability by transferring him to another institution. NGO workers, including myself, easily cast his response as a challenge to the system. He, on the other hand, explained that he was feeling depressed that day because he had received no news regarding his case and when he saw that the new staff coming on shift included police officers who were known to be aggressive and violent, he felt the exasperation rising in him so he took to it. As Hollander and Einwohner (2004, p. 548) state ‘resistance is defined not only by resisters’ perceptions of their own behaviour, but also by targets’ and/or others’ recognition of and reaction to this behaviour...Understanding the interaction between resisters, targets, and third parties is thus at the heart of understanding resistance’. Only by understanding resistance as polyvocal, can we really grasp its textures and details. While I understand the efforts to demarcate the epistemological boundaries of the term (See Abu-Lughod, 1990; Hoffman, 1999; McAllister Groves and Chang, 1999; Ortner, 1995), the aim of this chapter is not to come up with a definition of resistance inside detention centres. Nor is it a chapter about whether people in detention resist. Building upon previous research (Bailey, 2009; Bosworth, 2014; Campesi, 2015; Esposito et al., 2020a; Fiske, 2012; Griesbach, 2010; Hughes, 2016; Puggioni, 2014; Tyler, 2013), I take that for granted. Rather, this chapter seeks to critically examine the social world in which resistance inside and outside detention centres takes place. Therefore, as Jocelyn Hollander Eventually, Manuel was released. He was housed by some of his compatriots in a basement flat in the centre of Athens. He called us to let us know that he was happy to be free and that he would try again to fly to France. We never heard from him again. 120 177