Alone and Criminalized Leaving aside the detrimental effects that reception directly has on asylum seekers’ lives, another, scarcely touched upon side-effect pertains to the multiplicity of impediments it places towards their eventual integration. First Reception is not only a filtering tool between the “desired” and the “undesired” of a deterrence policy based highly on statistics of asylum chances tied to persons’ nationalities,134 but also and primarily a channel towards newcomers’ eventual integration into their new host society.135 Yet the very conditions under which this first reception takes place at the borders, creates a priori impediments to any such prospects. For starters, excluding some degree of informal education in the RICs (mainly NGOled with the support of UNHCR), formal education, which is ever more important for (not least) the potential of socialization it offers between refugee and local children, is virtually non-existent at the borders. In Evros, as already mentioned, the status of detainees means that minors (unaccompanied and otherwise) have no access to the world outside of the RIC, and thus to schools and formal education as well. On the islands, on the other hand, despite some slight differences,136 the situation is very much the same, with children “accommodated” in the RICs similarly having virtually no access to the official system of education. 137 This, to be noted, is yet another reason for tensions and complaints, with questions such as “why does my child not go to school?” seemingly being constantly on the minds of many worried parents.138 Similarly, the constant state of transit and uncertainty in which asylum seekers find themselves while forced to remain at the borders, coupled with ongoing deficiencies in terms of long-term, state-led, integration planning, further impede this process. Despite slow improvements on the mainland,139 especially on the islands the idea of integration still very much functions under a logic of temporariness, seemingly not yet accustomed to the fact that refugees “are here to stay”, as common beliefs seem to still be informed by the idea that, since they (i.e. asylum seekers) do not ultimately wish to remain in Greece, at some point they will leave.140 “Integration is very difficult in this context…integration needs a life-long plan and some sort of stability… [even] a temporary [sort of] integration is in need of a plan”141 Most importantly, however, reception, as currently implemented through an array of detention and restriction means, is the foremost barrier to integration. The very fact that most asylum seekers are “received” by means of detention and/or restriction of their liberty within the RICs and/or surrounding areas, a priori serves to create barriers between a community of “Them” (refugees and asylum seekers) and “Us” (the locals), whereby the aim –willingly or not– becomes keeping the two communities segregated at all costs, usually (on the islands) in the name of “protecting tourism”. 142 Indeed, it is not by chance that within these past two years’ increasingly state-led response to the management of arrivals (through RICs/”hotspots” and Pre-Removal Centers), a similar decrease in the participation of volunteer groups and/or activists from local societies has been the case at the borders.143 This has primarily been the result of 42