A European labour market and nationally bounded welfare states. EU emigration and challenges to social citizenship

Abstract

Access to the EU’s labour market and the principle of freedom of movement for persons (FMP) produced a mismatch for some countries of origin of migrants: Emigration of s cale decreased the resource base for the welfare state nationally while not sharing responsibility for social citizenship with the EU level. The countries of Lithuania and Romania are insightful for studying the political consequences of this mismatch. Surprisingly, collective actors from politics, social partners, and civil society hardly identified EU responsibility for emigration and its externalities. In contrast, solutions for the mismatch are sought at the domestic level. There, actors find themselves in a conundrum: Options for restricting FMP are politically unfeasible, measures for retaining the population hard to finance, and a cut back of some benefits unavoidable. Ultimately, this mismatch may lead to a vicious cycle in which emigration and the decreasing quality of social citizenship reinforce each other.

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