Klassvillkorad rörlighet inom EU

Abstract

In this article, we are addressing the issue of European labour mobility and show that the concept of class is embedded in the EU social policy framework. If EU provides common rules to protect mobile citizens’ social security rights when moving within Europe in order to promote social cohesion and equality, they resulted in new legal boundaries within Europe between the ones who are protected by law and the ones who are excluded. Thus, the legal framework led to a situation in which law does not apply anymore on the basis of national sovereignty but on the basis of enclaves attached to individuals. Citizens become somehow extraterritorial (embodied boundaries). The analysis of EU policy documents related to the coordination of social security systems and the investigation of the Swedish national regulations for implementation of free mobility, enable us to show that European free mobility is not a space facilitating free movement for everyone and that citizens might be bordered out depending on their class belonging. We argue that the legal framework has led to a policy of illegalization: the EU social framework far from protecting Europeans workers, has favoured market predation and the emergence of a new social class of citizens dispossessed of their social rights.