Lessons from the South-North Migration of EU Citizens in Times of Crisis

Abstract

In this volume, we have demonstrated that-since its inception in 2008-the global financial and economic crisis has strongly impacted migration flows to/from/within the European Union as well as the way policy-makers and the public have reacted to them. While we have noted an intensification of South-North migration flows in all the case studies, the political reaction of Northern European receiving countries to this increased mobility has often seemed unrelated to the actual size of the phenomenon. Similarly, Southern European countries of origin have also adopted diverse responses, ranging from indifference to active engagement towards the rising level of departure of their citizens. Over the past few years, the issue of the mobility of EU citizens has become increasingly salient and controversial. As demonstrated in this volume, the arrival of Southern Europeans has often failed to trigger the same level of animosity in destination countries as that of post-accession migrants from Central and Eastern Europe. Moreover, the renewed influx of asylum seekers to the EU, which intensified exponentially in the summer of 2015, has been seen to precipitate similar high levels of hostility. South-North flows of EU citizens, however, pose a series of questions for the future of migration in the EU: are we witnessing a repetition of the massive South-North migrations that took place two generations ago? Is migration a principal strategy to cope with the effects of crises within the European Union? How is

Commentary: A Citizenship without Social Rights? EU Freedom of Movement and Changing Access to Welfare Rights

“…The testing ground of this claim and its de facto limits have been seen in recent debates among critical social policy and legal scholars, on the problematic recognition and implementation of welfare rights for EU citizens across borders. As freedom of movement has expanded quantitatively – with the accession of East and Central European member states from 2004 (Favell, ), and then new youth and labour migrations after the economic crisis in the South (Barbulescu, ; Lafleur and Stanek, ) – legal and political framings of these migrations have indeed changed. Scholarship is of course adamant that there is little evidence to substantiate one of the clear symptoms of this shift: the accusations rife in populist media and, increasingly, among mainstream politicians, about abusive “welfare tourism” and “poverty migration” by mobile EU citizens (Dustmann et al, ; Giulietti et al, ; Ehata and Seeleib‐Kaiser, ; Vargas‐Silva, ).…”

“…Only a few years earlier the same tabloids had raised the alarm about the arrival of Southern Europeans, young Italians, Greeks, Portuguese and Spaniards escaping the severe economic crisis at home. While absolute numbers were not spectacular, the news about the revival of the South‐North migratory routes once used by guest‐workers, had elements of triggering a new moral panic about "immigrants" (Lafleur and Stanek, ). The 2014 elections for the European Parliament brought surprises and electoral rewards for far‐right populist parties across Europe.…”

Special Issue Introduction: Exploring the Lived Experiences of Intra‐EU Mobility in an Era of Complex Economic and Political Change

“…Intra‐EU migration came under further critical scrutiny with the global financial crisis, which affected Europe as whole but most acutely impacted the weaker economies of the EU periphery, especially the southern tier of Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy. This laid the foundations for a new wave of South‐to‐North migrations within Europe, reprising the direction of movement of the much earlier labour migrations of the early years of the Common Market from the late 1950s to the early 1970s, but this time made up disproportionately of young unemployed or career‐blocked graduates (see Lafleur and Stanek, ; also Pratsinakis et al, this issue).…”

Far from a Burden: EU Migrants as Pioneers of a European Social Protection System from Below

“…It is often reported that EU migrants refrain from using their right to social protection in their chosen destination country either due to lack of knowledge or for fear of losing their right to residence (Lafleur and Stanek, ). This is often due to migrants’ unfamiliarity with the welfare system and the systemic differences between the sending and receiving countries (‘different types of welfare habitus’).…”