Trubeta: ‘Rights’ in the grey area: undocumented border crossers on Lesvos 65 refugees would find care provided by state institutions instead of volunteers, another section of the activists had a comprehensive proposal for the operation of the screening centre. The latter suggested the establishment of an institution that did not have the police on-site, but that was monitored by NGOs. This suggestion is similar to a general expert proposal on the establishment of ‘Centres for the First Reception for Those Entering Greece without Meeting Legal Requirements’,18 which was developed by Greek NGOs in 2010, when the creation of screening centres was still under debate. At that time, declaring their intention to monitor state policies in favour of immigrants, NGO experts suggested the founding of screening centres (so-called Centres for the First Reception) to work under the monitoring of NGOs. This model was thought to safeguard the provision of care and protection, especially of vulnerable groups (such as unaccompanied minors, victims of trafficking and torture, etc.) but would also serve to flag up possible racial discrimination by state authorities. In the screening centre, after ‘all necessary activities of police interest’ (such as the registration of fingerprints) had been completed, immigrants would be divided into different categories according to their status as asylum applicants, those to be removed, etc. Under this proposal, immigrants would not be ‘prisoners under the administrative status of imminent expulsion’, but would stay ‘under confinement’ not to exceed fifteen days, during which asylum applications were to be decided. Destroying any illusions about the creation of a humanitarian institution, the screening centre, which opened in September 2013 in the village of Moria on Lesvos, was a genuine prison. In contrast to PIKPA, the building in Moria is well fenced off, not only on the outside but also on the inside as the containers – in which people are housed – are surrounded by wire and separated from both the rest of the building and the courtyard.19 As well as the police (who have taken over asylum procedures) and FRONTEX, UNHCR and the NGO Doctors of the World also operate inside. Given that the open reception centre PIKPA had operated for almost one year, the establishment of a closed institution for incarcerating undocumented border crossers appears paradoxical. Nonetheless, it fulfils what Zygmunt Bauman has described as ‘a typically modern ambition of social design and engineering, mixed with the typically modern concentration of power, resources and managerial skills’.20 Ironically, when the new screening centre on Lesvos was inaugurated, its first detainees were a large Palestinian family (including some elderly and children), and some young Afghanis, all of whom had previously stayed in PIKPA for several days, waiting for the authorities to provide them with expulsion orders. They were transported to Moria, then, after registration, the Palestinians were released. They returned to PIKPA, stayed there under the protective oversight of volunteers and then left the island for Piraeus one day later. This scenario reveals in miniature how artificial threats are created, to be coped with by using surveillance technologies. In effect, as Bauman has argued, it points to the ‘culture of instrumental rationality’ that epitomises modern bureaucracy Downloaded from rac.sagepub.com at Oxford University Libraries on June 3, 2016