Between mobility and migration : the multi-level governance of intra-european movement

Abstract

One of the cornerstones of the development of the European Union is the principle of free movement within the EU. The EU has created an unprecedented area in which not just capital, goods and services but also people can move around relatively freely. This freedom of movement is guaranteed by EU law and enshrined in the principles of the Lisbon strategy with the objective of creating ‘more and better jobs, by reducing obstacles to mobility’ (European Commission 2004, 2007). Especially after the EU enlargements in 2004 and 2011 with various Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries, the scale of EU movement has grown significantly. Migration from the EU Member States in Central and Eastern-Europe (CEE) has evolved into one of the main migration flows within Europe (Black et al. 2010). For instance, it resulted in more than 2.2 million people from Poland engaged in international migration or mobility between 2004–2007 (Grabowska-Lusinska et al. 2009). This contributed to a ‘new face’ of East-West migration in Europe (Favell 2008; Favell and Recchi 2010). It is therefore important to know more about migration from Central and Eastern to Western parts of Europe. Because this ‘new face’ has not remained without consequences (Van Ostaijen et al. 2017).