ANGELIKI DIMITRIADI the discussions with participants in Athens who have very brief recollections of Moria, having only stayed there for a day until they registered. The words of a refugee from Afghanistan I met in Athens are evocative in this sense: «It is different now. I came before 20 March, spent the night waiting in line, a big line, and got papers. Then I came here [Athens]… My friends that came after the deal with Turkey say it’s different now. They must apply for asylum first. They do not let them on the boat they are in Moria now, they cannot come here» (June 2016). Those who were released due to the expiration of the twenty-five days but who were still stranded on the islands often made indirect reference to the temporal role of the hotspot. One of my informants from Syria lamented that «if only I came on the first boat. I would not still be here. My brother came on the first boat, he is now in Thessaloniki» (Lesvos, July 2016). The «first boat» left Turkey before the implementation of the Statement. His brother registered and was moved to the mainland22. He arrived on Lesvos on 21 March, nine days later, and when we met in July 2016 he was still stranded on the island. The very purpose of the hotspots is to differentiate, categorize and thus temporarily govern movement23, through the screening process on the basis of nationality but upon the assumed category of mobility (migrant or refugee24). The immediate impact is felt on the processing of asylum claims. Syrians are being prioritized, and in a discussion with an asylum service officer it became clear that their prioritization is linked to the Statement. Syrians are the only nationals who in theory receive protection in Turkey, equivalent to that offered by the 1951 Convention25, which makes the processing of their claims simpler. Until the end of 2016 there were hundreds of nationals of other countries that had not been interviewed by EASO and the Greek asylum case, and many had not even managed to file a formal asylum claim (with only their intention to do so having been recorded). This is a pattern common to all the hotspots, with non-Syrians in many cases waiting for three months or more to lodge an asylum application. There are two dimensions to this differentiation that moves beyond exclusion. The first regards the status of those who wait for their application: while they wait, they are treated as irregular subjects. The second dimension concerns those in the hotspots who live with the fear of being sent back to Turkey: a spectre that haunts only those contained on the islands and that reinforces their spatial but also legal distance from those in the mainland. The hotspots and the islands perpetuate the immobility of the migrants. However, migrants have also found means of demonstrating their opposition to their detention, as well as ways of effecting, delaying or preventing change depending on the circumstances. I consider all the above as integral part of x 22 The Greek government wanted to move all migrants from the facilities to ensure adequate space for the implementation of the Statement. 23 See also Tsianos, Karakayali (2010) for a discussion of how detention camps in border areas appear to implement «a rigid system of mobility control» but in reality they are a «spatialized attempt to temporarily control movement» (p. 384). 24 See Carling (2015) for a discussion of the problems related to the traditional distinctions employed to understand contemporary migration. 25 For details on how the safe third country rule is applied to Turkey, see Dimitriadi (2016a). – 86 –