Mobility of labour in the EU during the last 60 years has generally been viewed as beneficial in the social science literature: migrants have improved their financial situation, receiving states benefited from increased productivity while sending societies reduced social spending and obtained generous remittances (for example Favell 2014). Since 1957 labour mobility was also underpinned by the EC’s/EU’s pledge that obstacles to mobility should be removed and while in practice only  partial steps were taken to protect for example the pension rights of mobile workers, EU member states did not question social rights of citizenship for migrants in principle. This is no longer the case. After years of increased migration from Eastern and most recently Southern Europe in 2015 governments in the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark and Austria are discussing plans to restrict EU migrants’ welfare entitlements. The Court of Justice of the European Union has recently taken a more restricting approach in Dano and Alimanovic, confirming to the member states that they can deny access to special non-contributory benefits to EU citizens.  

This panel will bring together contributions exploring how equal the access to social rights has been so far for EU migrants and native citizens in different areas of social policy and different member states. It will investigate how member states want to change access for migrants and natives; why they want change; how and why reform proposals differ between countries; and what the implications might be for free movement but also for native citizens.