Faultlines of EU Social Citizenship in the Course of Brexit #

Stefanie Börner

The Brexit vote can be seen as ‘the most vivid and dramatic expression of Euroscepticism’ (Room, 2020: 111). The vote-leave campaign’s successful ‘take-back-control’ slogan secured a victory for identity politics, ending the freedom of movement (FoM) between the United Kingdom and the European Union and thus turning ‘mobile’ EU citizens into ‘migrants’ (Antonucci and Varriale, 2020: 49). Yet, its narrative of ‘take back control’ also pointed to how European integration had generated extremely uneven experiences. Many Brexiters experienced the Europe-wide economic, political and social interdependencies triggered by European integration as an unbalanced relationship of exploitation. Social scientists must thus critically reassess such cherished certainties as Karl Deutsch’s transactional-ist paradigm. For Deutsch, and legions of researchers following in his footsteps, thriving common-market transactions and increasing transnational interactions and communication among Europeans were a promising indicator of the success of such regional-integration projects. Mutual economic interdependence and the resulting social interrelationships were however unable to prevent 52 per cent of UK voters in the 2016 referendum from preferring to leave the European Union after 44 years of membership. Has European social integration failed?

The Brexit vote and the subsequent withdrawal process have exposed the fragility of the EU’s already weak social architecture, a fragility which stems from the imbalances and unequal distribution of burdens in the EU. Although in many respects the UK’s EU membership was an outlier, Brexit teaches us some lessons with respect to these general weaknesses. In what follows, Brexit’s explosive power will be considered from a social-rights perspective in order to uncover the faultlines and vulnerabilities of EU social citizenship.

Social rights have a stabilising function #

Social rights in the Marshallian sense comprise ‘the whole range from the right to a modicum of economic welfare and security to the right to share to the full in the social heritage and to live the life of a civilised being according to the standards prevailing in the society’ (Marshall, 1950: 11). Social citizenship extends within national contexts, institutionalised in the national welfare state. Compared with civil and political rights, social rights especially constitute ‘a unifying force for the body of citizenry’ (Soysal, 2012: 2). Therefore, social rights operate as ‘institutional stabilizers’ (Ferrera, 2005: 14). At the European level, Marshall’s modicum involves the right to social welfare for those who leave the secure national membership space and migrate to another member state benefiting from the host country’s non-contributory basic provisions or the accumulation or transfer of previously acquired social-security entitlements. This is how EU social citizenship is embedded.

European integration, and the dawn of EU social citizenship with the Maastricht treaty in 1992 in particular, brought an unprecedented interconnectedness among citizens in Europe. Such political and social interdependence, and the resulting mutual responsibilities, long past exceeded the UK’s idea of a joint European venture. The basic tension between interdependence and independence, fundamental to the integration process (de Witte, 2018: 478), has become explosive during times of crisis. Brexit has revealed the existing deficiencies and stratification inherent in European integration.

The Brexit vote did not only call into question the position of British citizens living in the EU but also the situation of EU citizens residing in the UK. According to the UK Office for National Statistics (ONS, 2018), around 785,000 British citizens live in the EU27 while 3.6 million European citizens live in the UK. Since the Brexit vote, these citizens have faced an uncertain future not only with respect to their residency status but also their social status, given the sudden unpredictability of future entitlements. To regain stability, both groups have sought lawful status in their country of residence or pursued alternative strategies, such as exit. Yet, depending on their social status, the persons concerned have been having very different experiences.

For some EU migrants living in the UK—such as low-skilled migrants from eastern Europe or women working in the care sector—Brexit has entailed much more dramatic consequences than for others (Antonucci and Varriale, 2020). Migrants in precarious labour-market positions or without work find it extremely difficult to prove their residency status when trying to settle their situation. Brexit has thus created a situation in which formerly mobile EU citizens are divided into ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ Europeans.

Moreover, for British citizens living in another member state, Brexit abruptly jeopardised the taken-for-granted claims tied to FoM and EU citizenship and, as with their counterparts in the UK, they face unequal opportunities to secure their future position. The Brexit process has exposed intra-European divisions and ‘hierarchies of belonging’ and these are being reproduced or even reinforced as national law and administrative procedures replace what was once governed by EU regulations, as Benson (2019: 13) has shown in her study of British citizens resident in France.

The imbalances of EU social citizenship #

The uneven exposure to Brexit-related imponderables for those directly affected by the UK’s exit strategy also uncovers general flaws and built-in inequalities of EU social citizenship. Crises such as Brexit, but also the financial crisis and the most recent Covid-19 crisis, shed light on the unequally distributed burdens and responsibilities member states face. For example, while some are affected by excessive emigration of medical and care staff, others are confronted with high numbers of immigrants often perceived as a threat to social systems. So far, there is no compensation mechanism to counterbalance these asymmetries. Existing EU social policies, such as the redistributive regional policies, the ‘open method of co-ordination’ or more recently the European Pillar of Social Rights, are very limited in impact (Börner, 2020). This leaves us with the European social rights established via social-security co-ordination.

The importance of this supranational social-citizenship regime cannot be overestimated. However, during Brexit the member states’ strategic selectivity became especially obvious, which indicates that the governance of EU social rights has failed. This failure results from two mechanisms which also apply when the EU is in normal operation.

First of all, despite the fact that FoM is a ‘fundamental right’ (judgment of the Court of Justice of the EU, September 20th 2001, C-184/99) tied to the status of EU citizenship, FoM and the social rights it entails remain conditional. This conditionality is ingrained in the citizenship directive (2004/38/EC) and restricts the (freedom of) ‘mobility of the poor’ (Lafleur and Mescoli, 2018: 481), who are denied access to the rights and entitlements granted to the more deserving mobile EU citizens—the economically active or those in training. After an initial period in which the Court of Justice emphasised the universality and importance of European citizenship rights, a recent shift towards a more restrictive legal interpretation, which emphasises the economic status of the respective migrants, has even reinforced this conditionality (see the 2014 cases of Alimanovic and Dano).

The second mechanism which intensifies the inequalities inherent in European integration is related to the question of governance. Even though the EU is a supranational co-ordination regime, access to particular social rights is still contingent upon the responsible national (or local) authority. This leaves many EU migrants at the mercy of discrimination by public authorities and national legislators. Studies on free movement and social rights show that it is not only the unemployed who are unable to prove their residency rights to gain access to non-contributory social benefits but indeed migrants with part-time or zero-hour contracts and those employed in female-dominated sectors (Shutes and Walker, 2018).

Although even before the financial crisis the citizenship directive made sure that FoM within the EU was conditional upon one’s economic position, subsequently member states came increasingly to use welfare policies to limit the free movement of EU migrants and annul their residence permits. For example in Belgium, between 2010 and 2014, more than 8,000 EU citizens, from member states such as Romania, France, the Netherlands, Italy and Spain, received from their municipalities an ordre de quitter le territoire. These letters go back to a new measure which classifies EU migrants as undeserving Europeans because they have been receiving non-contributory benefits for too long or are deemed to have ‘no reasonable chance of finding employment’ (Lafleur and Mescoli, 2018: 486).

So instead of protecting the most vulnerable, both member states and the Court of Justice have taken actions which have weakened the position of poor, unemployed or under-employed EU migrants, thus forcing them into illegality and precarity and restricting their FoM. The co-ordination regime is governed, and controversial articles of EU directions and regulations formulated, in ways that force citizens into national systems of classification, thus creating hierarchies of deservingness. For example, such vague concepts as ‘habitual residence’, the status of ‘employment’ or ‘unreasonable burden’ tend to be turned into instruments of exclusion when implemented at the member-state level.

Resolving the inherent contradictions #

The EU has some way to go to achieve a universal social-citizenship regime which grants all mobile EU citizens a modicum of social security. This has prompted some observers to speak of market instead of social citizenship. Brexit demonstrates the inherent contradictions between universal freedoms and the particularity of residence-based social rights, which result from the division of labour between supranational liberties on the one hand and national social provisions on the other. This leaves deprived migrants facing new boundaries of welfare which do not exist for better-off EU citizens. The imbalances and asymmetries addressed have high potential to imperil solidarity, which is why they should no longer be ignored.

Only an unconditional and truly universal social-citizenship regime can remedy the inequities and disparities accruing from European integration, which have become even more visible through the lens of Brexit. Such a citizenship status needs to be linked to an EU-wide compensation mechanism for member states suffering from severe imbalances—both crises-driven and stemming from FoM—to protect member states from excessive demands and prevent future strain. This might comprise oft-discussed measures, such as European unemployment and minimum-income schemes, as well as remuneration mechanisms for member states which face excessive costs.

References #

Antonucci, L and S Varriale (2020), ‘Unequal Europe, unequal Brexit: how intra-European inequalities shape the unfolding and framing of Brexit’, Current Sociology 68, 1: 41-59

Benson, M (2019), ‘Brexit and the classed politics of bordering: the British in France and European belongings’, Sociology: 10.1177/0038038519885300

Börner, S (2020), ‘Marshall revisited: EU social policy from a social-rights perspective’, Journal of European Social Policy: 10.1177/0958928720904330

de Witte, F (2018), ‘Interdependence and contestation in European integration’, European Papers 3, 2: 475-509

Ferrera, M (2005), The Boundaries of Welfare: European Integration and the New Spatial Politics of Social Protection, Oxford: Oxford University Press

Lafleur, J-M and Mescoli, E (2018), ‘Creating undocumented EU migrants through welfare: a conceptualization of undeserving and precarious citizenship’, Sociology 52, 3: 480-96

Marshall, TH (1950), Citizenship and Social Class and other Essays by TH Marshall, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

ONS (2018), Living abroad: British residents living in the EU: April 2018

Room, G (2020), ‘The re-making of Europe: the long view’, Journal of European Social Policy 30, 1: 108-20

Shutes, I and S Walker (2018), ‘Gender and free movement: EU migrant women’s access to residence and social rights in the UK’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 44, 1: 137-53

Soysal, YN (2012), ‘Citizenship, immigration, and the European social project: rights and obligations of individuality’, British Journal of Sociology 63, 1: 1-21