work as a hinge, linking resistance to a discussion about solidarity, abolition and imagining a radical future in the epilogue. Animalisation of immigration The mass breach of human rights inside detention centres in Greece ‘operates in tandem with, and is lubricated by, stigmatizing representational practices which involve the extreme dehumanization of people’ (Tyler, 2020, p. 124). Women in particular were perceived through a racialised prism as morally and intellectually distinct from and inferior to citizens (Angel-Ajani 2003; Brennan 2004; Jiwani 2005; Kapur 2005). For example, Xenia, a detention officer at the Petrou Ralli detention centre tried to explain to me why Iraqi women do not love their babies. ‘Iraqis have a certain mentality, that women have to be animals. I’m not saying this to offend them but this is their way of thinking because of their religion, their culture, as a country, as a people.’ (Interview, Petrou Ralli detention centre, 2011). Detention officers overwhelmingly viewed women as the racialised embodiment of failing cultures, employing dogmatic claims about their naivety and their criminal, sexually deviant and subhuman nature (Angel-Ajani 2003). Maria, an outspoken detention officer, tried to explain ‘Nigerians suffer a lot. That’s why sometimes they are like animals in a cage. Asian women are very shy and not very provocative. But Nigerians and Dominicans are very hard women because their journeys and their lives have been hard too.’ (Interview, Petrou Ralli detention centre, 2011) What the officers’ testimonies make very clear is that women who irregularly cross borders are doubly stigmatised, first for their contravention of gender-based expectations and second, for their breach of the border. Black feminist thought has been instrumental in problematising the strong black woman ideology and the perception that black women lack access to femininity (Hartman, 2019; Spillers, 1983). The notion of hegemonic femininity (Collins, 2004) assumes the superiority of white women by devaluing other femininities that fall short of meeting the hegemonic standards. As Sandra Gilman claims in her book ‘Black Bodies, White Bodies’ the sexuality of black women became metonymic for deviant sexuality in general. A statement by the director of the Petrou Ralli detention centre highlights the intersection between race and gender as it applies to detained black women in detention. ‘Nigerians create more problems; they are more dynamic. We try not to put them all together in the same cells. They are into voodoo and stuff and you can’t communicate with them. Moreover, they have a different mentality, a street mentality. They come here and become prostitutes and they become harder than other women. Basically, they are men.’ (Interview, Petrou Ralli detention centre, 2011). Bosworth, Pickering and I (2018) have argued elsewhere that ‘such 179