intra-EU Mobility Research Articles

What Makes Us Move, What Makes Us Stay: The Role of Language and Culture in Intra-EU Mobility

This article analyses the determinants of international migration flows within the European Union and specifically focuses on the role of cultural and linguistic differences in explaining the size of these flows. For that purpose, a set of indicators of cultural distance is controlled for along with economic, demographic, geographical, political and network variables using data from 28 member states of the EU over the period 1998–2018. Economic factors play an important role in examining migration flows, but economic differentials alone may be insufficient to explain the uneven real-life migration pattern in the EU. The results suggest strong evidence of the importance of linguistic distance in explaining the direction of migration flows across the EU.

Language brokering as acts of care: experiences of young migrants born in Poland and Romania living in Sweden

ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to analyse how young migrants born in Poland and Romania, living in Sweden, construct their experiences of language brokering as acts of care within family relationships. The empirical data is based on narratives and visual material produced during interviews with 18 young people who moved to Sweden as children to join one or both parents migrating for work as part of the intra-EU mobility since 2004. The article adds new knowledge to the research on language brokering by focusing on its relational dimensions and designating it as one of the many other caring activities circulating between family members. The young people in the study act as language brokers by translating, interpreting, doing the writing and speaking as well as taking on an advocating and educational role for parents. By switching between languages in their ordinary conversations with siblings and parents they also engage in mutual multilingual learning. Their role as language brokers is analysed as part of the changing care dynamics between children and parents after reunification in Sweden. The young people construct their experiences in relation to feelings of love and obligation and their understanding of what is age appropriate to do. Their experiences of language brokering change over time and depend on other family members' bilingual competences and a supportive environment. According to our results, practicing language brokering may contribute to strengthening children's capacities as citizens and their feelings of being seen as important and valued in the family and society.

Enforcing outsiders’ rights: seasonal agricultural workers and institutionalised exploitation in the EU

ABSTRACT Enforcement is a crucial aspect for understanding labour market hierarchies in Europe and exploitation of mobile and migrant EU workers. Whereas most literature on intra-EU mobility and enforcement has focused on posted workers, this paper sheds light on enforcement in seasonal agriculture and forestry where posted work is very uncommon yet mobile workers overrepresented. In the EU, enforcement highly depends on Member States’ capacities. Therefore, we explore how labour rights, and specifically wages, are enforced across four EU Member States with different enforcement regimes, namely Austria, Germany, Sweden and the UK. In line with existing research, we expect that enforcement will be more effective also in agriculture/forestry where it is organised mainly through industrial relations, as opposed to administrative or judicial enforcement. Nevertheless, our review of enforcement practices suggests that seasonal agricultural and forestry workers’ rights are neglected across countries, irrespective of enforcement regime. We argue that the scant efforts made to enforce these workers’ rights amounts to institutionalised exploitation of labour market outsiders and that administrative enforcement is necessary to ensure hypermobile workers’ rights. We also draw attention to the contradictory role of the EU and its simultaneous attempt to strengthen and weaken enforcement.

There and gone again? Migration to and posting of third-country nationals from Slovenia and Poland

Drawing on research conducted in the framework of the POSTING.STAT project for Slovenia and Poland, this article contributes to the literature on the posting of third-country nationals (TCNs) within the European Union from the perspective of the sending countries. Our research questions are: What are the current posting trends and patterns of mobility of TCNs from Poland and Slovenia? How do national legal and policy instruments in Poland and Slovenia shape the recruitment of TCNs and facilitate the posting of these TCNs to other Member States? We find that the recent growth in posting from both countries is driven by the substantial increase in the number of posted TCNs, which might signal at least their complementary role, if not the replacement, of posted nationals with TCNs to sustain the established business models of posting from Slovenia and Poland. We observe two trends. Firstly, national legal and policy instruments encourage labour migration from certain third countries with which Slovenia and Poland have historical ties and geographical proximity, which are then embedded in their national labour markets. Secondly, both countries remain source countries for the posting of workers, a pattern they have been able to sustain by increasing the use of TCNs for posting. Hence, despite a growing share of TCNs involved in posting, most TCNs continue to be based in Slovenia and Poland, suggesting posting or onward migration are not necessarily the main reason these workers go to Slovenia and Poland in the first place. Yet, the increase in numbers of posted TCNs observed in both countries, regardless of stricter regulations and the Covid-19 pandemic, suggests that posting in labour-intensive sectors such as road freight transport and construction is increasingly becoming a segmented labour market. We argue that the posting of TCNs might grow into an important intra-EU mobility channel, with the caveat that while certain EU countries will insist on restricting direct access to their national labour market for TCNs, other EU countries, especially those that so far have acted as labour or services suppliers, will lend themselves as gate-openers for the intra-EU mobility of TCNs.

Relational interdependencies and the intra-EU mobility of African European Citizens

How can we better understand the puzzle of low-skilled migrants who have acquired citizenship in a European Union country, often with generous social security provision, choosing to relocate to the United Kingdom? Drawing on Elias’s figurational theory as a lens, we explore how relational interdependencies foster the mobility of low-skilled African European Citizens from European Union states to the United Kingdom. We found that African European Citizens rely on ‘piblings networks’, loose affiliations of putative relatives, to compensate for deficits in their situated social capital, facilitating relocation. The temporary stability afforded by impermanent bonds and transient associations, in constant flux in migrant communities, does not preclude integration but paradoxically promotes it by enabling an ease of connection and disconnection. Our study elucidates how these relational networks offer African European Citizens opportunities to achieve labour market integration, exercise self-efficacy, and realize desired futures; anchoring individuals in existing communities even when they are perpetually transforming.

Affective Citizenship in Brexit Britain: EU Citizens’ Responses to Emotional Governance

Abstract Brexit has exacerbated the importance of understanding the affective dimension of citizenship for EU citizens residing in the southeast of England after the UK’s 2016 referendum on membership of the EU. The state’s emotional governance, manifested in citizenship policies and the naturalisation process, reveals a complex understanding of belonging and exclusion in the context of intra-EU mobility. In this essay I focus on how naturalisation requirements establish the emotions that new citizens should feel and the impact this has on their representation of citizenship. This analysis focuses on three out of thirty-four semi-structured interviews conducted in 2017 with EU citizens at different stages of the naturalisation process. Findings show that the political context emphasises the emotional elements of naturalisation in a context of political instability. I conclude that participants’ accounts reveal their resistance to the way the state attempts to govern through emotions. This resistance serves as an indicator of emotional governance in Brexit Britain.

Movilidad, migración y empleo en Europa

Three aspects of European societies are analysed in this article: the very low level of labour mobility within European Union (EU) Member States (MS), the high level of external immigration, and the disparate and sometimes extremely high rates of unemployment, especially in MS with an extremely low level of mobility and high levels of immigration. Intra-EU mobility is six times lower than in the US, and is mainly from Eastern MS. Non-EU immigration is higher than in the US, coming from the Southern Mediterranean, Latin America, the Middle East, Asia, and Africa, and is concentrated in the North Mediterranean EU MS. It is precisely the MS of this area of the euro zone that are receiving workers from several foreign countries, as well as from the EU, and this area has low employment rates, and high or very high unemployment rates.

A contested foundation of European integration: The free movement of labour

Abstract Since the eastern enlargement of the European Union (EU), the movement from east to west has become the main driver of intra-EU mobility. Recently, the free movement of labour has been contested not only in the debates around Brexit, but also in other receiving countries. It is not on the political agenda, but several studies have highlighted the economic and demographic effects of massive emigration in eastern EU Member States. More recently, the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the functioning of free movement. Economic integration theory assumes that migration continues until wages are equalized in the receiving and sending countries. This paper analyses the perception of intra-EU mobility in the literature and empirically tests whether there is a relationship between the dynamism of income growth in the receiving (Germany, Austria and Spain) and sending (Central and Eastern European) countries, and the dynamism of migration. The empirical results do not support the neoclassical assumption that an equalization mechanism can function, even in the long run. To cope with recent challenges, this paper argues that free movement should not be considered as an element of a spontaneous market mechanism, but as an economic-political product, based on a constitutional order.

The Renunciation of One’s Nationality of Origin and European Union Citizenship: is it Compatible with Spain’s Dual Nationality System?

As a basic principle of international law, the ways of the different modes of nationality acquisition, recovery and loss is a matter falling under the jurisdiction of sovereign nations. However, as with other issues, relatively unrestricted intra-EU mobility rules have spawned a debate on the compatibility between national regulations and the demands of the current European status civitatis. In this study, considering the increasingly common factual and legal phenomenon of plurinationality, we will question the existing requirement in some systems of nationality law (among them Spain’s) for one to expressly renounce their nationality of origin when aspiring to be naturalized through residence in another Member State. In the current stage of the development of European integration process, this demand for renunciation becomes an unsustainable demand. In fact, avoid the legal recognition and enjoyment of two European nationality obstructs the full respect for own personal and plural identity as European citizenship. Implementing the procedures towards a paradigm shift are as needed as possible, which is explored in this study.

Time-out for the outsider refugees. Ten-years of im-mobility across EU borders and outside the reception systems

ABSTRACT This paper discusses the process of migration to Europe stressing how human mobility is governed at the global level along differential and racialized lines. Drawing on ethnographic field with a group of refugees moving from Italy to Germany from 2011 to 2021, the paper gives insights on how refugees daily negotiate the European borders and how borders affect their lives in the long-term. The research discusses the theoretical concept of ‘Departheid’ to highlight the structural violence deployed by European and national institutions upon migrants, and add a focus on the temporal dimension stressing the intrinsic relation between the structures of power and the management of time embedded in the governing of migrant mobility. Practices of institutional abandonment and criminalization of refugees intra-EU mobility are affecting the temporalities of refugees, who react through everyday struggles of time re-appropriation aimed to regain control over their own lives and subjectivity.

Intra-EU Mobility: The Employment and Welfare Experience of Temporary EU Workers in the United Kingdom

This article explores the mobility pathways of temporary EU workers and the implications that transnational temporary mobility has on their labor market outcomes and access to social rights and benefits. The experiences of temporary EU migrants working in the UK show that despite the narrative of the borderlessness of the common European labor market, access to host countries’ labor market and welfare is shaped by their employment status and welfare eligibility criteria that produce worker precariousness. Temporary EU workers’ experiences are characterized by employment insecurity and unequal access to labor and social rights, effects which might increase since the UK has left the EU.

Onward migration: An introduction

Onward migration: An introduction

What makes us move, what makes us stay: The role of culture in intra-EU mobility

This article analyses the determinants of international migration flows within the European Union and specifically focuses on the role of cultural and linguistic differences in explaining the size of these flows. For that purpose, a set of indicators of cultural distance are controlled for along with economic, demographic, geographical, political and network variables using data from 28 member states of the European Union over the period 1998-2018. Economic factors play an important role in examining migration flows, but economic differentials alone may be insufficient to explain the uneven real-life migration pattern in the EU. The results suggest strong evidence of the importance of linguistic distance in explaining the direction of migration flows across the European Union.

Young EU migrant citizens’ access to financial independence in conditions of precarious work: A tripartite approach to welfare conditionality

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.

Analysis of the structure and practical activity of the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions

The article presents the structure and practical activity of the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions. The text consists of the following chapters: introduction, institutional structure, activities and objectives of the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, the practical activities of the Foundation, social dimension of intra-EU mobility, its impact on public services and a summary. The author also described the issue of “welfare magnet hypothesis”. In general, the article reveals and describes the significance of the institution in the context of the labour law policy operating in the European Union.

Trends in Intra-EU Labour Mobility

Trends in Intra-EU Labour Mobility

The 2004 EU Enlargement as an Outcome of Public Policies: The Impact of Intra-EU Mobility on Central and Eastern European Sending Countries

This article analyses the impact of mobility on sending CEE countries after the biggest EU enlargement of 2004 with some reference to the EU enlargement of 2007. It is presented on the fifteenth anniversary of the biggest historical EU enlargement with a disclaimer that economic and social changes are still enduring. The aim of this article is to explain the interlinked economic and social impacts of EU enlargements on CEE sending countries relating to: GDP, wages, economic remittances, welfare systems and employment, human capital (tangible and intangible), social remittances and social mobility. It is proved here, that exploring and exploiting the complex catalogue of available arguments and findings across CEE countries, EU enlargements can be seen as outcomes of a set of top-down public policies with their regulation (EU law), distribution (four freedoms) and redistribution functions (EU funds) along with bottom-up activities and developments of migrants themselves.

Key features of intra-EU labour mobility and its impact from a sending country perspective: Addressing the consequences in Hungary

AbstractThe main characteristics of intra-EU labour mobility are well documented. There is less focus, however, on the pattern of mobility of the East European (EU-13) EU-mobile citizens. This group constitutes more than half (57%) of all the EU movers and show, to some extent, other features than the rest of the EU mobile citizens (EU-15). The first part of this paper gives a brief overview of some key demographic and labour market characteristics of the East European mobile citizens in the most important destination countries. The perspectives of the sending countries are not analysed frequently enough, and thus the second part of the paper focuses on this issue in the case of Hungary, by asking to what extent the serious labour shortages, ensuing from the outflow of Hungarians, could be compensated by the recent increase of immigration of third country nationals. Using OECD data, the paper quantifies the balance of labour gains and losses for Hungary and compares this with Czechia, Poland, and Slovakia. The analysis concludes that despite the substantial recent inflow of third country nationals into Hungary, it remains to be seen whether this has a real substitution effect for the lost domestic labour force.

Voice after Exit? Bulgarian Civic Activists between Protest and Emigration

This article belongs to a forthcoming special cluster, “Contention Politics and International Statebuilding in Southeast Europe” guest-edited by Nemanja Džuverovic, Julia Rone and Tom Junes. Historically, civic activists who left their home countries in the wake of protests would either risk disappearing in anonymity or become engaged in political “exile networks.” However, since the outbreak of the “global wave” of protest, the ability of activists to take advantage of freedom of movement and technological advances in social media changed the framework and conditions of such “exile.” This article addresses the question of what happens when protest activists decide to go abroad to study, work, and build a life. We focus in particular on the case of Bulgaria, the fastest shrinking country in the world. On the basis of structured qualitative interviews with Bulgarian activists who have gone abroad in the aftermath of the 2013 Bulgarian protests, we trace how migration and intra-EU mobility affect the political participation of activists, the ways in which they participate, and their diagnoses of the present. In other words, we explore whether one can speak of “exit after voice,” leading in the long run to a decrease in activism. We argue instead that we are witnessing a transformation of the dichotomy “exit-voice” into a more complex scale of forms of protest organization and participation, facilitated by social media and the freedom of movement within the EU. Herein, the real risk might be not that migration leads to political passivity, but that the new “voice” found through the experience abroad remains rather marginal as activists’ networks are transformed and community building becomes a challenge in an increasingly precarious world.

“Here, There, in between, beyond…”: Identity Negotiation and Sense of Belonging among Southern Europeans in the UK and Germany

Whilst most of the research on intra-EU mobility has mainly focused on the reasons behind young Southern Europeans leaving their home countries, and secondly on their experiences within the new context, little is known about their sense of belonging and identities. This article aims to fill this gap by exploring Italian and Spanish migrants’ social identity repositioning and the cultural change characterising their existential trajectories. Drawing on 69 semi-structured interviews with Italians and Spaniards living in London and Berlin, this article shows that the sense of belonging to one or more political communities and boundary work are related to individual experiences and can change due to structural eventualities such as the Brexit referendum. While identification with the host society is rare, attachment to the home country is quite common as a result of people’s everyday experiences. Cultural changes and European/cosmopolitan identification are linked to exposure to new environments and interaction with new cultures, mostly concerning those with previous mobility experience, as well as to a sentiment of non-acceptance in the UK. However, such categories are not rigid, but many times self-identification and attachments are rather blurred also due to the uncertainty around the duration of the mobility project. This makes individual factors (gender, age, family status, employment, education) that are often considered as determinants of identification patterns all but relevant.