8/13/2019 Marginalised People Enact EU Citizenship to Expand and Deepen It

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8/13/2019 Marginalised People Enact EU Citizenship to Expand and Deepen It

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ENACT investigated other cases that pose particular dilemmas for policy makers who are responsible for

defining the content and scope of EU citizenship. These include people whose cross-border mobility

challenges existing concepts of EU citizenship. Such people include very different groups, such as the

Roma and sex workers, who although they may be EU citizens, have demonstrated recently across

Europe to draw attention to the discrimination they experience over housing, education and jobs, and to

their rights of freedom of movement and to work. Regarding the mobility of groups, such as sex workers

and - in different ways - the Roma or Sinti people, policy makers must recognise that free movement

policies bring with them unintended consequences in terms of new and challenging claims to citizenship

rights.

The project also studied the policies of EU Member States, particularly France and the UK, where there

has been a recent toughening of legislation on deprivation of national citizenship, linking this with the

fight against terrorism. The researchers point out that the loss of national citizenship brings with it also a

loss of EU citizenship. National laws on what actions can lead to a loss of citizenship are as important as

laws on its acquisition, as both reveal the interaction of state, society and citizen.

The ENACT research on citizenship was conducted by means of qualitative techniques such as

ethnographic fieldwork, in-depth interviews and discourse analysis of government documents. Work on

the deprivation of citizenship in the EU was carried out through socio-legal analysis, and accounts of

cross-border mobility were obtained by various combinations of ethnographic, interpretive, and

discourse analysis.

The key message of this research is that claims to EU citizenship, and the rights that citizenship brings

with it, are enacted in a range of unexpected and unconventional ways, as well as through the courts

and other formal settings. The concept of EU citizenship contains tensions, which will invariably play out

in policy terms. A significant challenge is the necessity to create mechanisms to enable non-EU citizens,

who enact citizenship indirectly, to claim EU citizenship within the EU law. The most significant challenge

to European citizenship by EU citizens who experience discrimination is the necessity to prevent the

emergence of a tiered notion of citizenship.