Freedom through movement? The promise of EU citizenship and the limits of a transnational life

European Union rhetoric and scholarly debate have made ambitious claims about the promises of European citizenship. Based on group discussions with ‘mobile Europeans’, this thesis aims to confront those promises with the lived experiences of EU citizens. The thesis complements normative and legal accounts of EU citizenship with a sociological approach that analyses how Europeans’ ways of talking about mobility relate to their expectations of the social, economic, and political possibilities in the countries they move between. Of particular interest is how mobile Europeans develop personal agency and construct a sense of political belonging when moving between contexts. The empirical part of the thesis engages with these concerns through an analysis of group discussions held with Europeans who live and work in another EU member state. Under investigation is the nature of the ‘emancipation’ and enhanced sense of agency offered by free movement rights; how that agency is related to mobile Europeans’ political expectations; and, finally, what mobile Europeans’ future plans reveal about their ability to sustain an integrated political identity while living across borders. The thesis finds that EU citizenship is at an impasse. While free movement has indeed become intrinsic to Europeans’ broader horizon of self-realisation, ‘mobility’ is often discussed not only in terms of aspiration, but of constraint and individual adaptation. Likewise, the promise of emancipation unbounded by nationality is undercut when Europeans find their social, political and economic attachments fragmented across contexts. Realising EU citizenship’s more ambitious transformative promise will require confronting this fragmentation by more radically fostering relations of democratic equality between EU citizens who share a social space.