Legitimating intra-European movement discourses: understanding mobility and migration

Abstract

Free movement of people can be considered as a contested issue. While the European Commission stimulates a further 'harmonization' of citizen 'mobility', some member-states question the 'burdens' of 'EU migration'. To understand these differences, it contains a multi-level focus on the meaning-making practices of policy actors at the European Commission and in the Netherlands. The analysis reveals a European legal discourse legitimated by expert authorization which differs with a Dutch national discourse legitimated by mythopoesis. As such, it displays the significance of a discursive approach since it shows the contested meaning-making practices and its policy consequences around intra-European movement.

Making EU refugee policy in 2001, applying it in 2022: Directive 2001/55/EC and its use in 2022

“…Thus, the Austrian government had an interest in ensuring that temporary protection was not extended too long, and that member states showed solidarity in accepting refugees. Similarly, in the Netherlands public discourse in the early 2000s shifted towards a negative view on migration, fuelled by right‐wing populist parties (van Ostaijen, 2020; Roggeband & Vliegenthart, 2007).…”

Securitizing mobility: Profiling ‘non-core’ Europeans

“…While studies have presented new empirical data on migration or new ways to define mobility, the politicization, securitization and contestation of ‘free movement’ for citizens from CEE countries has received limited attention. As Van Ostaijen (2020: 8) notes, most studies tend to focus on migration politics in general, instead of the politics of intra-European movement (see, for example, Boswell and Geddes, 2011; Geddes and Scholten, 2016; Menz and Caviedes, 2010). While there is nothing new in claiming, as a wide range of scholars have done (e.g.…”