Paper Titles & Abstracts

This paper seeks to really explore how the ideals of active European (European Union, EU) citizenship as imagined by EU actors are actually realised by EU citizens. It analyses the institutional framework of EU citizenship and sheds light on the qualitative effects of education and mobility on citizens' political participation by comparing the practices of young EU migrants and non-migrants in Sweden and the United Kingdom. The first part of the paper assesses the EU's institutional framework for active European citizenship and citizens' political participation. In this part EU citizenship is seen as the main source of citizens' cross-border, EU-level political participation and involvement in further EU integration. Because EU citizenship is dependent on member state citizenships, it is observed in a multilevel structure, considering citizens' national and EU-level political participation as significant in shaping their realisation of active EU citizenship. The second half of the paper explores the extent to which active EU citizenship is realised by EU citizens and compares the experiences of migrant, young (aged 18-35) and highly educated EU citizens, the group for whom EU citizenship is likely to have the most meaning, with that of non-migrants in Sweden and the United Kingdom. Through the analysis of original focus-group evidence, the paper investigates the likely similarities and differences between the experiences of these citizens in two Eurosceptic member states, and identifies a number of factors that seems to hinder or promote active EU citizenship. Overall, the paper argues that intra-EU mobility seems to be the main source of active citizenship in Europe, therefore more programmes should seek to make intra-EU migration, even if temporary, compulsory for EU citizens.