Earning Social Citizenship in the European Union: Free Movement and Access to Social Assistance Benefits Reconstructed

Abstract

While ideas on ‘earned citizenship’ have been around in discussions on the coexistence of freedom of movement and nationally-bounded welfare states in the European Union, both the concept and the process it entails have hardly been explored in connection to EU (case) law. This contribution identifies earned citizenship as a technique of government in the broader political strategy of neoliberal communitarianism, requiring Union citizens to ‘earn’ access to the welfare system through an emphasis on their individual responsibility to fulfil the economic, social and cultural conditions of membership. Analysing economically inactive Union citizens’ access to social assistance benefits, it argues that earned citizenship has been visible since the Court’s early citizenship jurisprudence, but has been reconstructed with the recent Dano-line of case law.

Keywords: European Union, earned citizenship, social citizenship, social assistance, free movement, welfare state