modern Greek immigration policy.39 The law, which was drafted by the Greek police, was predicated upon the belief that ‘illegal immigration’ (λαθρομετανάστευση), as it was referred to in the text, is a social problem that can be deterred and must be controlled. As mass immigration in the 1990s was becoming a phenomenon the Greek state was forced to deal with, the response was the hasty design of a new law as a knee-jerk reaction in willful ignorance about why people migrated in the first place (King et al., 1998). This approach framed immigration as a matter of public order and (internal) security. Indeed, the new law announced the creation of new special police teams to ‘fight illegal migration’ (article 5).40 Unlawful entry, residence and employment were criminalised setting the ground for what would later become a longer list of ‘undesirable aliens’ (article 11). As Hindpal Bhui (2016) has argued about a different context, underpinning migration policy in those early years, then, was a moral panic about enemy migrants. By making deterrence the guiding principle of immigration law and policy, the government provided the ideological space in which racism became culturally acceptable. Coumpunding matters, as Baldwin-Edwards (2004) points out through an outline of policy measures by the Greek state, the absence of a clear political strategy, though, left ample room for arbitrariness and discretion in policy implementation (Liebling, 2000). More specifically, it gave the police carte blanche to manage the ‘migration problem’, in their own terms. This new legal framework makes little mention of administrative detention measures; yet, it provided for the detention of deportable aliens in cases of risk of absconding and public order (Article 27) and until the completion of the return procedure. The assumed temporariness of the arrivals put the emphasis on arresting and deporting the alien other through the infamous ‘sweep operations’ that would become a prominent feature of border control in forthcoming years. For example, according to an analysis of statistical data on immigrants in Greece, the expulsion of foreigners to neighbouring countries, most predominantly to Albania, has been massive in scale, creating a continuous exchange of populations between the two countries (Baldwin-Edwards et al., 2004).41 The strict legal framework and the ensuing criminalisation of entry, exit and working undocumented For the link, see Law No 1975/1991 [in Greek]. It was not before 1998, however, that the police division of border guards was established, with their role limited to preventing the unlawful entry of foreigners to Greece, their detection and arrest. I address their role in more detail in chapter four. 39 40 Baldwin-Edwards (2004) argues that for a large number of these expulsions, which the Ministry of Public Order termed as re-directions, there was no legal basis. Furthermore, in some cases, these expulsions were often a reprisal against Albanian policies towards Greeks in Albanian territory (Baldwin-Edwards and Fakiolas, 1998). 41 70