Downloaded by [94.66.124.78] at 01:32 30 November 2017 JOURNAL OF ETHNIC AND MIGRATION STUDIES 7 seeking protection, while finally, the Georgian nationals in our sample had made repeated attempts to cross, and thus were fully cognizant of what awaited them. Understandably, those with little or no knowledge of what would happen at the border as well as women seeking protection, fleeing conflict and violence, reported that border protection was not a consideration in their decisions about whether, how and when to cross the border. In fact, most women found border protection almost unfathomable. They found it difficult to reconcile, in other words, why and how they had come to Greece with their treatment upon arrival. Detention was not what they had expected. In other contexts, it has been contended that international familial and ethnic networks furnish anticipatory flight with high levels of information about exactly what will happen and when (Havinga and Böcker 1999). In Greece, however, where there is intense border protection in a state experiencing an ongoing number of arrivals that strain capacity, alongside significant, popular fears of immigration and unprecedented EU resources dedicated to securing the border, there nonetheless remains great uncertainty and unpredictability in policy outcome. Among those we interviewed, only those whose country of origin was geographically proximate to Greece had a basic working knowledge of what to expect at or soon after crossing the border. As a result, they were the only ones who had considered the likely consequences in their decision-making. Even this group, said they were deceived by their facilitators about particular risks of their journey, the challenge of finding work and barriers to their onward mobility. All women turned to operators (smugglers) because of dangers they would face travelling unaccompanied. ‘The boat took us to a Greek village’, Irema recalled. ‘And we were 6 Georgians. And we had another 2 guys who took us here. It can't be that six women can travel by themselves. Someone has to be with … the other two were the people who do this business.’ Only women from Georgia referred to their facilitators in criminal terms, often calling them ‘mafia’. Everyone else described chains of actors with varying relations to one another.11 In their accounts, different people performed distinct roles from the country of origin to arrival at the Greek border. Women faced multiple risks on their journey including sexual violence. Crossing the border was physically difficult; their bodies, as Banerjee (2010, xvi) evocatively writes, were pitted ‘against the border and the superstructure of state security’. Evros River and overcoming Greece's border fortifications we particularly difficult. As Liyana, who had travelled from the Dominican Republic, described matters: I wanted to come to Greece because some persons had come here, some friends and they didn't tell me that it would be dangerous to come here. When you come here, they don't tell you that you are going to pass through the mountains, that it's going to be dangerous for your life, that you have to cross a river … When we got to the river, they put us on a boat and they left and they said that when you arrive on Greek soil you have to walk. In the river I lost everything, I was without clothes. And then they arrested me in Orestiada. (Liyana) Despite such dangers, women repeatedly reported a willingness, or perhaps more accurately an expectation and capacity, to suffer in their bid to forge a new life. Chiora: … they told me I was going to hide in a bus for two hours Interviewer: In the bus? Where, in the luggage compartment?