Freedom of movement and cross-border social rights have become one of the most salient and contentious topics in EU political debate. Various political actors contend that the current rules for free movement and cross-border welfare rights prompt welfare tourism, burden welfare systems, are ‘unfair’, and place pressure on local communities. Irrespective of whether such fears are real or merely perceived, ‘Brexit’ has made evident that the political tensions arising from the current state of affairs are to be taken seriously. Moreover, as opportunities for citizens to benefit from free movement remain starkly differentiated according to economic status and country of origin, the status quo of free movement and cross-border welfare also put the legitimacy of the EU citizenship project into question.

This panel brings together contributions that assess various issues key to the increased salience of free movement, EU citizenship and social rights from different disciplinary and methodological perspectives. Specifically, the papers investigate free movement, social rights and EU citizenship through the following lenses i) a comparison of the EU status quo with historical examples of multilevel citizenship in territories with devolved welfare responsibilities; ii) the administrative responses to, and fiscal impact of, intra-EU migration and on national welfare states; iii) a discursive analysis of how domestic political debates on free movement and cross-border rights relate to domestic debates on welfare more generally; and iv) how EU citizenship might become more ‘social´.