by developing a conceptual apparatus that examines how the historically contingent asymmetrical power relations engendered by capitalist market structures shape and transform citizenship politics in both its form and content.
The remainder of Part I traces the historical development of EU citizenship over the second half of the twentieth century. The historical background provided in these chapters establishes a foundation for understanding the current state of affairs in EU citizenship policy, first and foremost by dispelling a prevailing misconception that a specifically supranational citizenship politics have only existed since the Maastricht Treaty’s introduction of a formal EU citizenship category in 1993.
In Chapter 2 we analyze the struggles to implement substantive pan-European citizenship rights, including social rights, to facilitate intra-EU labor migration and thus labor mobility in line with imperatives of economic growth during the postwar embedded liberal period (see Ruggie 1982). The de facto transnational citizenship regime that emerged through these dynamics, we argue, highlights the fact that migration policy has been central to EU citizenship policy from the very outset of the integration project, while the regime’s rigid exclusion of third-country nationals (TCNs) from citizenship provisions marked the creation of a dualized citizenship order that remains at the heart of EU citizenship politics to this day.
Chapter 3 focuses on the transformations in EU citizenship policy during the Single Market induced “relaunch” of the integration project from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s. We argue that the introduction of the EU’s own formal citizenship model in the Maastricht Treaty was bound up with the ideological re-orientation of the EU toward “embedded neo-liberalism” (see van Apeldoorn 2002) and the domination of the Single Market project’s “market making” negative integration; a contradictory combination attempting to embed market forces within a limited social-institutional framework (e.g., welfare policy, research and development, education and skills training) (van Apeldoorn 2003a). This was the case insofar as EU citizenship was itself based on neoliberal precepts of the individualized “market citizen.” Crucially, however, we show that the “socially thin” market citizenship model was also underpinned by an exclusivist “ethno-cultural” dimension emphasizing the (Judeo-Christian) civilizational, cultural, and religious facets of a European identity that Brussels took great pains to promote as part of its new European citizenship policy. In consequence of the Single Market, external migration also emerged as a common European “problem,” calling for common action and solutions that increasingly were to couch migration in terms of control, security and crime. The securitization and criminalization of the migration problématique during the relaunch—motivated as part of a greater concern to “protect” EU citizens against new external as well as internal threats—can be regarded as another component in the EU’s attempt to compensate for the absence of supranational social rights; a move that furthermore served to bolster the dualized order of EU citizenship policy discussed in Chapter 2.
Part II of the book focuses on the citizenship politics in the contemporary context of the Lisbon Strategy, the ambitious strategic blueprint launched in 2000 seeking to transform the EU into the most competitive knowledge-based economy (KBE) in the world by 2010. As our account moves into the contemporary scene, the analysis becomes empirically richer and more detailed, compelling us to make an empirical division between EU migration policy, on the one hand, and the EU’s more explicitly articulated, or “formal,” citizenship policy, on the other. This should be read as a practical, or pragmatic division, rather than one implying that these two main sides of citizenship politics have become analytically separated from each other. As the reader will no doubt notice, the analysis in Part II also gives more weight to migration policy. This was a conscious decision on our part rather than a case of haphazard lopsidedness: as we will seek to motivate throughout Part II, this emphasis on migration policy is necessary precisely because migration has become articulated by the EU as a key issue within its contemporary citizenship politics. Here we should emphasize that “EU migration policy” in our account refers to a complex conceptualization that bridges the commonly invoked analytical and empirical separation between the external and internal dimensions of EU migration policy. As such, we scrutinize both the external dimension of EU migration policy—as in labor migration from non-EU countries, asylum policy, and policy to prevent “illegal” or irregular immigration—on the one side, and the internal dimension—as in migrant integration policy, anti-discrimination policy, and labor migration, or “free movement” within the EU area—on the other. Moreover, by conceiving of these dimensions as analytically inseparable, this, what we may term, integrated approach provides for a discussion of causes as well as consequences of EU migration policy that accounts for the dynamic of oftentimes contradictory political and economic driving forces that are at work in the formation and execution of migration policies. Such a wide-ranging approach provides a comprehensive picture of a complex development. What is more, this approach is becoming all the time more important. Thus, as the external and internal dimensions of EU migration policy have become thoroughly interdependent, the analytical separation between the external and internal dimensions is turning out to be increasingly untenable.
The opening chapter of Part II, Chapter 4, takes on the task of uncovering how EU citizenship—particularly in terms of social citizenship—has developed since the launching of the Lisbon Strategy (2000–2010). Considered by many to have ushered in a new era for the integration project, the Lisbon Strategy is analyzed in detail in order to determine to which extent it actually deviates from the “embedded neoliberal” hegemonic order and socially thin market citizenship model of the relaunch era. We argue that contrary to some enthusiastic academic and political assessments, the Lisbon Strategy does not mark a “positive” turning point for EU-level social citizenship, but instead remains firmly grounded within the framework of embedded neoliberalism. Yet the novelty of the Lisbon Strategy as it relates to social citizenship is that it focuses almost solely on citizen responsibilities or duties to make themselves employable in light of the inevitable restructuring involved in the transition to a globally competitive KBE. We go on to explain how this has been further intensified since the shift in early 2005 to a streamlined “growth and jobs” agenda under the Commission headed by José Manuel Barroso.
In Chapters 5 and 6 we return to EU migration policy as it unfolds in the areas of migrant integration and anti-discrimination policy, extra-EU labor migration policy, asylum policy, and EU policy to fight so-called illegal immigration; current EU estimates put the number of “illegal” (or irregular) migrants in the EU-25 at about 8 million.4 Chapter 5 concerns itself with the developments in migration policy under the auspices of the EU’s Tampere Program (1999–2004), while Chapter 6 deals with Tampere’s multi-annual successor agenda, the Hague Program (2005–10). Both of these chapters examine the contradictory interplay between internally and externally directed supranational initiatives within the broad field of EU migration policy. Here, we put stress on what we identify as growing tensions between the EU’s agenda to crack down on “illegal” immigration and “bogus” asylum seeking, and to toughen measures aimed at migrant “integration,” on the one hand, and on the other hand the EU’s simultaneous promises to base EU asylum policy on humanitarian values, to combat migrants’ social exclusion and to institute vigorous measures to fight racism and discrimination. As part of this we discuss the implications of the EU’s developing migration policy for the issue of EU citizenship, in general, and for the prospects of migrants’ access to social
