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The state and the citizen-as-migrant : how free movement changes the social contract
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1028-3625
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EUI RSC; 2021/79; Global Governance Programme-454; GLOBALCIT
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STRUMIA, Francesca, The state and the citizen-as-migrant : how free movement changes the social contract, EUI RSC, 2021/79, Global Governance Programme-454, GLOBALCIT - https://hdl.handle.net/1814/73020
Abstract
Free movement differs from migration in an important yet often disregarded way. While migration forces a relation between a state and a non-citizen, free movement problematizes the relation between the state and its own citizens. This article explores the transformation of the latter relation, advancing two related arguments on the nature of the social contract between the state and the citizen in the EU. The first is that in a group of states committed to mutual concern and recognition towards one another and their respective citizens, the citizen-state relation becomes non-exclusive. The second is that this non-exclusive relation calls for a form of reflexive recognition between the citizen interacting with a home Member State from the perspective of a migrant (the citizen-as-migrant) and the migrant interacting with a host Member State from the perspective of a citizen (the migrant-as-citizen). Reflexive recognition links the duties states owe to migrants to those they owe to their citizens, and the rights of migrants to the duties that, as citizens, they owe to both home and host Member States. By exploring this reflexive recognition the paper furthers the understanding of the interaction between state sovereignty, citizenship, and international movement in two important respects. First, by linking free movement and a transformation of the social contract, it traces a form of ‘cosmopolitanism-from-within the state’ advancing philosophical and political attempts to mediate between the cosmopolitan and the statist ideal. Second, in reframing free movement as an aspect of the relation between the state and the citizen rather than as a genus of migration, it grounds a non-dominating conception of international movement.