Entrapped in Liminality: Social Protection of EU Vulnerable Migrants

This Paper deals with the cross-border access of economically inactive EU migrants to national systems of social protection, offering an account of the current state of European social citizenship. It explores the transnational space of social solidarity by looking at the challenges posed by Union citizenship to the paradigm of intra-EU migration by virtue of the far-reaching principle of equal treatment. To this end, it focuses on medium-term residents, as they are the most exposed, especially in the frame of crisis-ridden politics, to the whim of executive discretion in sheltering the boundaries of solidaristic communities. Moving from the recent ECJ case law and its teleological reduction of EU migration law, the contribution shows how the dismissal of the proportionality scrutiny of the national rules limiting the access to social benefits for indigent migrants determines the implosion of Union citizenship. Indeed, the very transnational roots of Union citizenship, which have previously accommodated a framework of shared responsibility for individuals who belong across borders, are now weakened to the point that the traditional membership-by-nationality is restated despite the effective bonds with the State of origin. As a result, prior to the acquisition of a right of permanent residence and unless not deported, citizens who lack economic self-sufficiency fall between two stools, being supported neither by the State in which they live nor by the State of birth: entrapped in a permanent transition between statuses.