We are walking into the air-conditioned office of the director of the First Reception Service at Moria. It is an especially hot day with high humidity in mid-July 2016. The cool office feels like a small oasis amid a maze of caravans, bounded by metal fences and barbed wires all around. One of the three secretaries offers us immediately a bottle of mineral water as we sit down to wait for our appointment. The director is having a meeting with some people in his office and we can hear loud discussions through the thin plastic partitions within the caravanoffice. More people go in and out of the director’s office with some papers for him to sign, a question to ask, or an update to report. At a certain point there seems to be a quiet moment and the director walks out of his door to warmly shake our hands and lead us to his office where we are seated at a small round table next to his rectangular larger bureau. “Please excuse the delay,” he mutters, “it is always very busy here.” Mr. Kourtis talks with us about the work in Moria. The coast guards transfer to the hotspot all the border-crossers who are brought to shore everywhere across the island. Here, the border-crossers undergo nationality verification, medical exams, socio-psychological assessment, fingerprinting, registration in the Eurodac database, and an opening of their asylum procedure. Almost everyone is requesting asylum upon arrival. We ask the director about the main differences that the hotspot brought about to the handling of the so-called refugee crisis. “In the [previous] summer because of the numbers it was impossible to implement the provisions in the law. People were getting a piece of paper that they didn’t know what to do with and looked to leave the island. Now everyone has a file.” He pulls from a cupboard next to his desk a green folder to show us an example of how the different documents are placed in one single file. ! 6 of 13