Reality bites: EU mobiles’ experiences of citizenship on the local level

ABSTRACT

With the introduction of EU citizenship a set of colliding and overlapping political frames and rights constellations has established new forms of mobility across EU member states. In this regard, respective scholarship has focused particularly on the reach and limits of EU citizenship status and rights. Yet, less attention has been paid to the question of how mobile EU citizens themselves experience these citizenship constellations when they settle into another EU member state. Addressing this question empirically, the article compares EU mobiles’ experiences in two European capital cities, Berlin and Copenhagen. It applies a mixed-method design drawing from data of an online questionnaire and, especially, semi-structured interviews with EU mobiles. A particular focus is put on EU mobiles’ ability to navigate local and national regulations through which EU citizenship is orchestrated. Their experiences shed light on how membership becomes situational and dependent on local and national regulations and contexts, while EU citizenship status and rights are considered less relevant. Against this background, the findings emphasise how bottom-up perspectives to citizenship complement more dominant perspectives in the literature which focus mainly on rights, legal status and political frameworks from the top down.

KEYWORDS:

• EU citizenship
• intra-EU mobility
• membership
• local integration

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by UCPH Excellence Programme for Interdisciplinary Research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 CPR stands for Det Centrale Personregister. It presents a form of social security number in Denmark.

2 Healthcare card.