62 Race & Class 56(4) after the grave adventure of their long and dangerous journeys, the immigrants obviously felt themselves to be (and were) in good hands. Yet, the physical presence of the coastguard conveyed the impression that the authorities were indeed concerned with the border crossers, giving rise to the hope that the formalities would soon be completed and they would be able to leave for the mainland. Hence, once the staff from the coastguard ceased to turn up and keep guard in PIKPA and there was a noticeable delay in issuing expulsion orders, the impression arose that the residents were being forgotten. Their invisibility increased because of PIKPA’s distance from the town, running the risk of turning it into a typical camp for refugees and immigrants characterised by Zygmunt Bauman: ‘Outside of that place, refugees are an obstacle and a trouble; inside that place, they are forgotten.’8 Preferring to be an obstacle and visible, they moved again to the port area joining the new and old arrivals staying there. ‘Disturbing the public’ with their physical presence was seen by both immigrants and activists as the only way to pressure the state authorities into issuing them with ‘papers’. (Besides which, the volunteers and activists were getting exhausted after several months of providing care, all the while supporting the project with their own financial means.) At the same time, rising political scepticism and controversy over the official status of PIKPA as ‘administrative detention’ threatened the unity of the solidarity network. For most of the activists who were critical of this development, the provision of care, and the confidence the border crossers placed in the civilians involved, did not outweigh the fact that their treatment by the authorities was based on the principle of criminalisation. Nor that surveillance was now usually carried on also by civil agents according to rules enforced by the state authorities. Moreover, a state plan for establishing a screening centre on Lesvos was announced in spring 2013; as it drew nearer, the most critical activists envisaged this meant the establishment of a prison in the proper sense of that term. Thus, they insisted that PIKPA be returned to its initial status as an open reception centre, operating as such with the support of the municipality. Others, who took the official designation of the planned screening centre as a ‘Centre for the First Reception of Undocumented Border Crossers’ at face value, urgently demanded its immediate establishment and opening, expecting the state authorities to take responsibility for providing the border crossers with humanitarian aid and ‘papers’. In the section that follows, I argue that the consent of a section of the activists to the establishment of a detention centre, and their collaboration with the state authorities in the surveillance of undocumented immigrants and refugees, indicate the wider diffusion into society of a politics of power that moves in the interface of repression and humanitarianism and becomes internalised by non-state agents. Power rationalities and post-bureaucratic humanitarianism Currently, the establishment of a detention regime for undocumented immigrants and refugees, with its so-called screening centres as well as physical barriers Downloaded from rac.sagepub.com at Oxford University Libraries on June 3, 2016