Paper Titles & Abstracts

Over the past two decades, European Studies has seen an expansion of theories of integration of the European Union (EU) that are concerned with the social construction of a European polity through supranational citizenship and transnational relations. In these it is suggested that changing practices and processes across borders change the way that people think of themselves, their everyday activities and their vertical and horizontal connections to institutions, organisations and other people. Policy makers and academics have consequently often aspired for the development of an EU polity, with free movement and shared labour market rights eventually spilling over into a sense of loyalty towards common institutions and cultural and political unity among equal Europeans. This paper critically re-assesses these theories in light of responses to the mobility of Romanian nationals in Southern Europe. It is asked how autochthonous and Romanian actors in Italy and Spain have publicly framed the presence of Romanian citizens since the granting of EU citizenship and free movement rights to them in 2007. An analysis of parliamentary debates, public announcements, press reporting and primary interview material finds that there has been very little discussion of the EU or becoming European but instead debate on local issues and concerns. Rather than a linear spillover to an insider status for this population, the granting of EU citizenship has thus provided a shift in the opportunity structure for greater inclusion that plays out in different ways according to its embeddedness in specific local institutional and discursive contexts.