Equal access to equal rights? Tackling street-level discrimination against mobile EU citizens across four national administrative contexts

Freedom of movement is a prime ambition of European integration, allowing citizens to freely live, study, and work in other states, even beyond the borders of the European Union (EU), e.g. in Switzerland. It is also subject to political controversy, as shown by the Swiss limitation initiative, or Brexit. Particularly access to social benefits for mobile EU citizens in host countries has sparked political conflict. This project analyses bureaucratic discrimination – the biased treatment of different EU citizens by frontline bureaucrats – within this context. We ask three questions: Is bureaucratic discrimination against different types of mobile EU citizens, who try to access social benefits, mainly a reflection of societal discrimination (RQ1), or do national administrative contexts influence patterns of bureaucratic discrimination (RQ2)? And how can bureaucratic discrimination within different contexts be overcome (RQ3)?