Abstract
Young EU citizens are encouraged to enhance their ‘employability’ by taking advantage of intra-EU mobility, but, for many, moving to another EU country can instead generate disadvantages in the labour market. Drawing on a qualitative study on the experiences of university-educated young Nordics and southern Europeans working in precarious jobs in Brussels, we examine how their access to income support in the context of mobility shapes their access to financial independence. We argue that the variation in European welfare models regarding young peoples’ social entitlements impacts this access in multiple and complex ways. The article advances a tripartite approach that looks at the regulation and enforcement of conditionality of social entitlements on the levels of EU, their country of origin and their country of destination. The analysis shows how, in Belgium, precarious EU migrant citizens are denied access to income support due to the interplay between general welfare conditionality for all claimants and recently reinforced conditionality affecting EU migrant citizens in particular. In these situations, the de-familialising Nordic welfare models showed an aptitude for shielding their young citizens. The young southern Europeans, on the other hand, often had no access to income support in any country, which forced them to choose between family dependency and unfiltered exposure to precarity.
Highlights
Young Europeans, with and without educational qualifications, face persistent difficulties in accessing financial independence through secure, full-time, regular and permanent employment (Buchholz et al, 2009)
The empirical section focuses on the experiences of young university-educated EU migrant citizens who moved to Brussels from either southern European (Italy, Spain) or Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland) with hopes of professional advancement, but who ended up living through periods of unemployment and working in precarious arrangements defined by temporariness, insecurity, irregularity and insufficient income
We focus on one destination country (Belgium) and four countries of origin (Denmark, Finland, Italy, Spain), the welfare systems of which differ greatly regarding the availability, generosity and conditionality of support they provide for young people and recent graduates (Chevalier, 2016: 14)
Summary
Young Europeans, with and without educational qualifications, face persistent difficulties in accessing financial independence through secure, full-time, regular and permanent employment (Buchholz et al, 2009). The empirical section focuses on the experiences of young university-educated EU migrant citizens who moved to Brussels from either southern European (Italy, Spain) or Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland) with hopes of professional advancement, but who ended up living through periods of unemployment and working in precarious arrangements defined by temporariness, insecurity, irregularity and insufficient income.
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