threaten and weaken a seemingly powerful system, then we should turn to it in order to imagine the path towards abolition. In other words, I argue that resistance can give us the analytical and conceptual tools that work “against the assumptive necessity, integrity, and taken for grantedness of [immigration detention centres] and the normalised state violence they reproduce.” (Rodríguez, 2010). In his paper on the unintended consequences of promoting human rights in detention, Mike Flynn argues that attempts to reform immigration detention without also seeking to restrict use of detention, may lead to ‘kinder and gentler’ regimes, but ultimately extend the harmful outcomes created by immigration detention. Therefore, he advises that any campaign aimed at reforming immigration detention, must also take into account ways that detention can be constricted. In line with this, if abolition is not at the core of our thinking about exiting the abyss of detention, then we end up contributing to its continuing existence (Aiken and Silverman, 2012; García Hernández, 2017). Finally, I conceptualise writing as resistance. As I will argue in the epilogue, I have used writing as a way out of what scared and overwhelmed me when I first entered the field of immigration detention. In a sense this work came out of my rage and pain about what I experienced and witnessed as a researcher and practitioner in the Greek detention infrastructure but also as an outcome of my anxiety to get it right. Alana Lentin beautifully captures this anxiety about her work on race. ‘It should make us anxious to write about a force that makes people “vulnerable to premature death” (Gilmore 2007, 28). It should scare us to death to get it wrong because, while on the one hand, who cares what academics have to say, on the other, what they have had and continue to have to say impinges on whose bodies and souls harm lands (Smith 2021)’ in (Lentin, 2022, p. 485). By documenting the Greek detention system, I thereby resist the institutional silence about what happens behind bars. Thesis outline The thesis is organised first chronologically and then thematically. Chapters 2 and 3 situate current practice in a longer historical context of immigration and border control policies in Greece and Europe. While I divide them into specific time periods, marked by legislation changes, the shifting of entry points to the country, and other socio-legal developments I am not interested in providing a comparison between the different eras I have identified 31