GOVERNING IRREGULAR MIGRATION AT THE MARGINS OF EUROPE «migrant agency», and I use the term agency to indicate the decision-making process, but also the desire, attempt and/or at times ability to impact upon the pre-existing practices of migration management and governance of mobility (see also Squire, 2016). The result is crucial in relation to the hotspot and the island. There is a significant body of work on migrant agency in the analysis of irregular migration. There are also numerous important studies that draw on the Agambenian tradition that view spaces of contained mobility (such as detention facilities and camps) as sites where biopolitical control is exercised (Agamben, 1998). The hotspots are both spaces where migrant agency is mobilized and where biopolitical control is exercised. Small acts in the hotspot can reveal to an outside observer the efforts of migrants to maintain a level of autonomy. For example, clothes were hanging on the wire fence surrounding the containers. Although this was not the purpose of the wire fence, it can be argued that migrants had found a way of minimizing its forbidding role. Many of those who had been allowed to leave the hotspots, had been unable to find accommodation and thus returned at night to sleep in the hotspot. This created further friction between those who remained «immobile» for twenty-five days and those returning voluntarily to sleep at night. I find that this act of voluntarily going back to the very place of detention to sleep for the night is significant. It reveals the inadequacy of the Greek reception system but it also shows the capacity of migrants to effect change: the hotspot for those returning is no longer just a space of detention but a space of temporary shelter. An NGO discussant explained that tents gradually appeared outside the wired fence and near the hotspot. Relatives and friends returned to the area to camp for the night, near friends and relatives in the facility. This subtle repurposing of the space around the hotspot is a result of the migrants’ opposition to both the facility and the fact that some can be mobile outside while others remain detained on the inside. The most visible sign of opposition to the policy were the riots that broke out in the late summer of 2016. Moria was the epicentre of these uprisings. The migrants were protesting against the conditions of detention as well as against detention itself. The most recent progress report by the Commission (2017) acknowledges that: The number of persons returned remains much lower than the number of arrivals, thus adding pressure on the hotspot facilities on the islands. This is due to the accumulated backlog in the processing of all stages of asylum applications on the Greek islands and difficulties in locating migrants at various stages of their asylum and return procedures (p.5). The report further admits that for returns to increase, it is imperative to continue enforcing the geographical restriction on migrants on the islands, and to create a sufficient reception capacity including closed centres on the islands (ibid.). One wonders whether detention loses its credibility if it does not lead to the expressed outcome-return. Riot is a form of «physical resistance» (Hollander, – 87 –