National Citizenship in a Mobile Europe: They Are Changing!

Abstract

This chapter emphasises that mobility within the European Union (EU) can and likely to transform the perceptions of young citizens about their national citizenship. Most importantly, the original focus group evidence with young and highly educated citizens suggests that EU mobility reinforces the significance of inclusive national frames for notions of citizenship and turn some of the banal aspects of the dimensions of national citizenship more tangible. By comparison, stayers are likely to take it for granted that local and national policies dominate their everyday lives, transposing this knowledge to make sense of EU politics—in the one-off cases it was deemed as relevant. The chapter thus cautions against adopting overly progressive anticipations for the characteristics of mobile national citizenship.