386 Social & Legal Studies 34(3) to the Commission (European Parliament, 2022). Residents (including children) are subjected to bag and body check every time they return to the camp (Refugee Support Aegean and PRO ASYL, 2023). In addition, the gates are closed between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m. (Asylum Information Database, 2024).1 The consequence of not complying with the curfew for two consecutive times is termination of residence and of the material reception conditions provided in the centre. No procedural safeguards are established for this withdrawal.2 Further, it has been reported that entry and exit are allowed only at scheduled times (Greek Council for refugees and Oxfam, 2022). Since 2022, residents are not allowed to leave the centres at all for a maximum of 25 days from their entry, to conduct reception and identification procedures. This is based on Article 40 of the Greek Asylum Act (Amnesty International, 2024). Leaving the centre after this first identification period is further complicated by the location of the centres. The Samos centre is about 9 km from the nearest town, Vathi. A return bus ticket costs €3.20, an amount that exceeds the daily financial aid of €2.50 for each refugee, or €1.75 for members of a family of four (InfoMigrants, 2021). The other centres are located remotely as well, with poor connections to cities (Asylum Information Database, 2024) and, sometimes, particularly scarce availability of public transport (Refugee Support Aegean and PRO ASYL, 2023). Different organizations have conducted empirical research into the living conditions in the CCACs. From the interviews they conducted, it appears that residents generally experience these centres as a prison or detention-like situation. Already before the centre was opened, asylum seekers living in a makeshift camp on Samos indicated that they did not want to be relocated to the new camp, as they will be locked there ‘as prisoners’ (EU Observer, 2021; Trouw, 2021). After the centre on Samos was opened, Samos Advocacy Collective and Europe Must Act conducted six semi-structured interviews with residents of the Samos CCAC. In these interviews, respondents shared their experiences of feeling imprisoned and linked that to the different surveillance and control measures (2021: 2–4): It scares you. It’s like a prison, with all the fences. I fled from suffering to come here to a prison. My feeling is that I’m in prison. This is what I feel. [There is] too much control around, cameras, and drones sometimes. There (is) a lot of guards, and security. And if you’re going out, when you come back: body check, or the bag. Any place that you want to enter you find a private security person. Before you go there, they have to search [body-check] you. Search you well. In addition, the respondents talked about the impossibility of leaving the centre, expressing the involuntary nature of their stay there: Now we can’t leave, we’re trapped. It’s never been good from a mental health perspective, but after two years being here and now going into the third year [in Samos] it’s tiring.