The central role of the police was clear to me from the outset. Through an NGO contact, I managed to reach the then secretary of the Minister of Public Order, under whose jurisdiction the detention centres lay. We discussed about the research and she was very enthusiastic about assisting me in obtaining research access, because as she put it, her “heart was aching for refugees”. Despite the focus of the research on border crossing and policing, she recommended that I should not ask to do research inside one of the border centres because the police were reluctant in opening these facilities to outsiders given the bad reputation of the centres at the time (Medicins Sans Frontieres, 2010; 2014; Pro Asyl, 2007; 2012). Aware that an official denial would hinder my attempts, I followed her advice and asked to visit and research the Petrou Ralli detention centre in Athens. As she pointed out, Petrou Ralli was the largest detention facility in Athens, it was the only centre that accommodated women in the area and a large number of its detention officers had served at the border too. Finding high-rank officials who can ‘let you in’ seems crucial in research in such closed environments, especially when there is little information available about them. Rozakou (2019) describes a similar process when she was negotiating access to the Moria camp in 2015. As in her experience, official permission did come. In the beginning of December 2011, I was crossing the gate of the Petrou Ralli facility in Athens, which was open since 2005. At the first meeting with the director of all detention centres in Greece, I explained my background and previous research experience, the purpose of my project. and stated how I would ideally spend my time in the centre. As Emma Wincup explains, ‘researchers should be explicit about the implications of the research for the setting and those who work within it’ (2017: 63). He seemed relatively comfortable with the prospect of me doing research inside the centre. However, this may not have been due to the plausibility of the accounts offered, but rather that he knew little about academic research. Access was granted on the loose understanding that I would do research for some time in the centre and I was afforded a significant degree of freedom to interview both staff and detained women. Thinking of this as a big opportunity and being a novice researcher, I hastily wanted to start interviewing people. Therefore, at the time I did not lay out how I would ideally spend my time or discuss any requirements I might have had. This meant that unlike most prison and detention research, my fieldwork started with interviews rather than participant observation. Together I formally interviewed 40 46