“It is very difficult to work here. It is chaotic,” he concludes with his eyes looking at us in a mix of desperation and pride. He is proud of the fact that he and his staff manage to uphold the functioning of the Moria hotspot, but this, he repeatedly explains to us, is in spite and not because of the support they receive from the Greek government. During our visit, the director constantly referred to the absence of the state. This baffled us, as he was at that point in time the highest-ranked official in Moria and the one to whom we were referred by the Alternate Ministry of Migration Policy as its in-situ representative. As Herzfeld notes (1992), blaming a reified state is part of a clichéd narrative of powerlessness that bureaucrats commonly evoke when trying to defer responsibility for dysfunctional state procedures. Yet the director was not avoiding responsibility. In his eyes, the “absence” of the state in the hotspot indicates a state of abandonment. Not only border-crossers are deserted there in a prolonged zone of limbo and precariousness,[5] but state agents are also abandoned by the government to execute their duties with little resources and direction. The director’s frustrations painfully echo the camp’s contradiction between a formation designated to produce order and control, and a lived experience of futility and disarray. As we leave the premises of the Moria hotspot, the gate behind us remains half open to allow the traffic of humanitarian workers, secular and Christian volunteers, and EU officials. We walk past people wearing blaze orange, blue, yellow, and green vests—the humanitarian identification mark and a symbolic pass for moving through the guarded doors of this cutting-edge border technology compound—still captivated by the director’s exasperation. 10 of 13