EU Citizenship’s Future: Lessons from North America?

The freedom to live and work anywhere within the common European territory is the most significant right of EU citizenship, and it is also what Europeans think of first when asked what the EU means to them personally. The freedom to disregard ‘internal’ borders in Europe approximates a key right in democratic states around the world: the freedom of citizens to live and work anywhere within the territory of their state. These rights are guaranteed by international human rights norms (“Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each State” – declares the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; “Everyone lawfully within the territory of a State shall, within that territory, have the right to liberty of movement and freedom to choose his residence” – echoes the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights) and also by many national constitutions. But what appears clear and simple in the realm of law is anything but simple in the realm of politics. As of this writing, UK Prime Minister David Cameron joins the leaders of several other EU member states in raising questions about unhindered freedom of movement within the European Union, driven by a rising Euroskepticism that opposes mobility, often on the grounds that it benefits primarily elites, or conversely that only “welfare bums” are interested in entering one’s member state. Proposals to limit free movement within the EU remain different from the “bum blockade” in the Great Depression, which stationed police officers at California borders to turn back poor migrants from the rest of the United States, despite shared American citizenship. They are also still far removed from the limitations on free movement in non-democratic states, such as the propiska in the Soviet Union and its successors in Russia, the hukou household registration system in China, and similar limitations on free movement elsewhere. This paper places the current political contestation of internal migration in Europe (which is likely to intensify between now and the ECPR conference, not least because of an unfounded conflation of EU citizenship’s free movement rights with the Schengen border control system under pressure because of significant in-migration of refugees) in a comparative context, focusing on the similarities between political debates in Europe and those in Canada and the United States about inter-provincial and inter-state free movement, including barriers, incentives and disincentives, to the right to live and work within one’s state of citizenship. The perspective adopted is that of comparative multilevel citizenship, which will also serve to link the other contributions to this panel, focusing on future-oriented analysis.