When EU Citizens Become EU Migrants: The Crisis of Free Movement, or the Emergent Internalization of the EU’s External Migration Policy?

The debate over “migration” in the EU is no longer confined to the EU’s external migration policy. Rather, and certainly much propelled by the growing crisis-induced disparities between member states and the increasing anti-immigrant tendencies in the EU, the eroding commitment to migrants’ social incorporation can now also be seen to be catching up with the very institution of free movement in the EU itself. More and more, then, a formerly commended free movement of EU citizens is being recast as a detrimental immigration of “welfare tourists”. Accordingly, many EU members at the centre are now calling for restrictions on free movement from the peripheral members, requesting, above all, a curtailment of the social provisions that until now have formed an integral part of the EU’s free movement regime. This could be seen as calling into question the whole edifice and hence the whole future of EU citizenship as we know it. As with the current refugee crisis, it could also be taken as a sign that many of the features of the EU’s external migration policy are about to be internalized—reflecting a larger core-periphery dynamic currently being internalized within the EU—with a socially embedded free movement increasingly metamorphosing into a no-frills circular migration.