Trubeta: ‘Rights’ in the grey area: undocumented border crossers on Lesvos 69 home and care there, as he claimed. It was ‘for inhibiting riots’.40 Some months later (in December 2013), in a leaked audio document released to the public, the chief of the Greek Police was heard giving instructions to police officers on how to treat immigrants in detention, allegedly saying: ‘We must make their life unbearable’.41 But, whatever the rational explanations one might seek for the implementation of violence as a means of punishment and intimidation in the new technologies of border surveillance, such violence tends to acquire extraordinary dimensions. How can one justify the installation of razor-sharp barbed wire in the Spanish enclave Melilla, which does not merely inhibit border crossings but causes torturous deaths? What is it, if not the normalisation of the dehumanisation of human beings? (Needless to say, no living being deserves such torture.) There is an intriguing similarity between the violence exercised in immigration detention, as recounted by detainees, and, in ‘“regular” detentions in asymmetric warfare’, as recorded by Laleh Khalili. Using stories recorded from diverse sources, Khalili argues that ‘the eruption of violence and torture [are illustrated] not simply as bad behaviour on the part of a few ignorant “bad apples,” but through a systematic leakage of violence across boundaries of legality’.42 The reshaping of the boundaries of legality in exercising violence may emerge as a feature of the novel paradigm of immigration imprisonment. And, the rising dynamics of violence evoke the impression that Bauman’s term ‘wasted lives’ used to illustrate the valuelessness ascribed to immigrants and refugees in the current global order, is more than a powerful metaphor. In the contemporary landscape, migration imprisonment also produces vulnerable individuals the flexibility of whose status works for the benefit of the domestic society. Viewing the overall landscape of border surveillance and imprisonment, ‘flexible status’ outside prison is preferable to long-lasting detention and/or expulsion from the country, and is sought as a chance for moving away. Such a flexible status is conferred by ‘the administrative expulsion order’ that is perceived by immigrants and refugees who arrive at Lesvos as licence for moving legally in/through the country for a short period, facilitating a transition into the ‘grey’ area. The fact, however, remains that even after leaving the screening centre or the open reception centre, such movement will be clandestine. Clandestinity is a precarious (though the most viable) option for movement in the grey zone, keeping up migrants’ hope that they may achieve the regulation of their residence status when conditions allow. Conclusion The case examined here of the internment of refugees and undocumented immigrants on the Aegean island of Lesvos demonstrates that global developments are not simply reflected at the local level, but can also be negotiated to some degree, according to local rules. The establishment of an open reception centre Downloaded from rac.sagepub.com at Oxford University Libraries on June 3, 2016