Is European Citizenship a Two-Way Street? Attitudes towards EU Citizens’ Rights Compared

Under the freedom of movement framework, European Union (EU) citizens enjoy the right to freely work and reside in any other member state of the Union. The European citizenship status also implies equal treatment with nationals in access to employment, working conditions, and other social and tax advantages. Although this is a fundamental principle of cooperation within the EU, these rights have recently come under increasing public scrutiny, figuring especially prominently in the political debates leading up to the Brexit vote. Against this background, our paper asks: How do citizens perceive their rights in other EU mem-ber states? And how such attitudes compare to how they perceive EU citizens’ rights in their home country? We seek to explain individual-level support of and opposition to four different dimensions of European citizenship. We also examine consistency at the individual lev-el, specifically addressing whether people have coherent views on each dimension with regards to their rights abroad and that of EU mobile citizens in their home country, and the extent to which some dimensions are more polarising than others. Given the centrality of debates on European solidarity in the aftermath of the Euro crisis, the Brexit vote, and the refugee and migration crises, the issue of public support for transnational citizenship rights and their reciprocity looms large on the horizon for European integration. While our paper focuses on these perceptions in the context of the UK specifically, our findings are relevant for the whole of the EU, expanding our understanding of European citizenship in its dimension of identity and exploring the limits of European commonality in public opinion perceptions.