Tale of Two Citizenships?

Citizenship, Migration and Care in the European Union

Dr Heli Askola
Faculty of Law, Monash University
Clayton Campus, Wellington Rd, Clayton VIC 3800
Australia
Email: heli.askola@monash.edu

Introduction

This paper aims to contribute to discussions on the normative content of European Union
(EU) citizenship, with the aid of recent feminist research into gendered citizenship and
migration. In doing so, it brings together two strands of research into what could be
characterised as ‘citizenship’ (a concept with different meanings, as Lister, 1997: 28 notes)
to interrogate citizenship in the EU through attention to female migrant workers and their
citizenship.

The emerging citizenship of the EU has been the focus of much scholarly analysis. The
concept has also been much debated in the context of ‘post-national citizenship’, as shown
by the flurry of critical responses to the argument (e.g. by Soysal, 1994 and others) that
belonging and membership in Europe are being transformed as legal rights are decoupled
from nationality via developments such as EU citizenship. Some, particularly feminists, have
also concluded that although EU citizenship grants new rights to some EU citizens, it also
remains a thin and fundamentally gendered notion that offers little by way of enhancing
national citizenship, especially to women. In much writing on EU citizenship the concept is
analysed, unsurprisingly considering its sui generis nature, in a rather inward-looking
fashion, with little global political or social context that would bring these two criticisms
together.

This paper argues that a perspective on EU citizenship that utilises the bourgeoning literature
on gendered citizenship in the context of care and domestic work and migration in Europe
(‘gendered citizenship’) can shed light on EU citizenship’s normative underpinnings and
exclusions. Feminist theorists have argued that women’s inclusion in society and their
citizenship in the public arena can only be realised through attention to the private sphere,
particularly the gendered systems in place for care and domestic work. Research into

Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2267087

citizenship in the context of gender equality, European ‘care regimes’ and ‘welfare regimes’
has also started to incorporate specific attention to the role of migration, which provides a
global context for the economies of care, often in the context of so-called ‘care chains’.
While some of this research into migrant care workers could benefit from focusing more on
the legal dimensions of citizenship and migration status, together with attention to the law it
offers valuable insights into neglected sides of EU citizenship.

The paper begins by briefly framing the relevant debates on EU citizenship. After that it
introduces the recent feminist research into gendered citizenship and the globalisation of care
in Europe and subsequently uses this discussion to draw out and emphasise, from a feminist
perspective, the normative place of EU citizenship in Europe’s political economy and its
implications for migrant workers.

EU citizenship

The meaning and scope of European Union citizenship have been hotly debated since the
concept was introduced by the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 (for a short introduction, see
Besson and Utzinger, 2007). The notion has evolved much in twenty years, in large degree
owing to the Court of Justice of the EU, which has put flesh on the bones of EU citizenship.
With the case-law of the Court being important, debates about EU citizenship have appealed
to lawyers who have scrutinised the normative foundations and expanding content of EU
citizenship in great detail (e.g. Shaw, 1998; Reich, 2001, 2005; Spaventa, 2008; Jacobs,
2008; O’Neill and Sandler, 2008; Giubboni, 2010; Wollenschläger, 2011). Two aspects of
these debates are of particular interest here: first, the contested nature of EU citizenship as a
form of ‘post-national citizenship’ and second, EU citizenship’s gendered foundations.

As to the first aspect, discussions about EU citizenship as a form of ‘post-national’

citizenship (most notably by Soysal, 1994) have been prompted by EU law granting certain
rights – ‘free movement rights’ – to individuals who are not citizens of the granting EU
member state. These rights, in the context of the EU, also limit the sovereignty of EU
member states regarding (certain) migrants from other member states who have moved from
one member state to another. This dimension makes EU citizenship an example of an
allegedly broader pattern that decouples rights from nationality and erodes the multiple links
between belonging, rights and national membership (Soysal, 1994; Sassen, 2003). Since EU

Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2267087

citizenship gives rights, not expressly because of nationality, but by virtue of the act of
moving from one state to another (i.e. migration), it has been argued to be a part of more
widespread development (involving also e.g. international human rights) that makes national
governments lose some of their power to ‘make citizens’, and even to regulate immigration
(Soysal 1994). Often this has been welcomed as a potential way of overcoming at least some
of the shortcomings of traditional, state-centred citizenship, seen to be too exclusive of
outsiders in an increasingly globalised world where individuals exist not in bounded but
porous communities.

The most significant dimension of EU citizenship is that the right of free movement, the
strongest right of the evolving EU citizenship, now heavily restrains the ability of EU
member states to exclude those migrants who are citizens of the other member states (and
their families), thereby weakening member states’ national sovereignty, albeit only regarding
some migrants’ entry and residence. This limitation of sovereign control over borders
applies, to a limited extent (three months) to all EU citizens who are ‘free movers’, however
economically inactive or indeed antisocial they may be, as long as they are not an
‘unreasonable burden’ on the social assistance system of the host member state – and beyond
three months to anyone who can find employment (or is actively seeking it) and those who
have enough resources not to burden the host member state (Arts 6-7, 14, Directive
2004/38/EC, so-called ‘Citizenship Directive’). From this perspective, all European citizens
form a class of their own: aliens, when outside their own member state, but aliens with a
right that most migrants in the world lack, the right to enter another state and remain there,
with their families (subject to some limitations, but nonetheless). This right also means EU
citizens, while exercising their treaty rights, can only rarely be considered removable
(illegal) immigrants, for the purposes of expulsion/deportation from other member states
(Treaty on the Functioning of the EU, TFEU, Art. 45(3), Directive 38/2004/EC, Arts 27-33).

Critics have been quick to mention that in fact EU citizenship is partial and falls short of a
post-national ideal (most famously, Weiler, 1996) and the criticism that the notion was and
remains grounded on national citizenship of an EU member state is still frequently made
(Hansen, 2009). Even today, the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU states clearly: “Every
person holding the nationality of a member state shall be a citizen of the Union. Citizenship
of the Union shall be additional to and not replace national citizenship.” (Art. 20(1) TFEU).
As European citizenship is thus mediated through national citizenship and exists alongside it,

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providing additional rights (only) to (some) nationals of member states, there have been
many discussions over whether it in fact adds anything meaningful to domestic citizenship
(Reich, 2001, 2005; Maas, 2007; Kochenov, 2007). Some authors maintain that EU
citizenship is maybe to be dismissed altogether, as the only ‘actual’ right, free movement,
predates the ‘invention’ of the label of EU citizenship (Hansen, 2009; Schein, 2009). If
anything, critics would say, EU citizenship, by being premised on national citizenship and
not, for instance, legal residence in the EU, reinforces the latter.

Moreover, as some note, it is well-established that the EU still has limited powers over
immigration proper, that is, immigration from outside the member states – the ‘common
European immigration system’, the existence and completeness of which is sometimes
assumed in feminist care literature (sketched out below), is in fact very partial in substance
and in many ways the member states, not the EU, remain as the gate-keepers (Schein, 2009).
The EU’s resident ‘non-citizens’, referred to as third-country nationals (TCNs) have no EU
citizenship rights per se (except for those derived from a relationship with an EU citizen)
(Maas, 2008; Wiesbrock, 2010). In terms of entry, unlike EU citizens, TCNs are largely at
the mercy of domestic immigration law and insofar as they have any EU rights of their own,
these are, by virtue of fragmented secondary legislation, much more limited than those of EU
citizens (earned after five years’ residence in one member state, as per Directive
2003/109/EC). Their family reunion rights are also much more limited (Directive
2003/86/EC). It is true that the Court of Justice has again used the notion of citizenship to
carve out limitations to member state discretion regarding even some TCNs, especially when
related to EU citizens (Carrera and Wiesbrock, 2010), but these changes do not overcome the
general exclusion of TCNs from EU citizenship.

As to the second aspect, the much-analysed feminist (but not just feminist) problem with EU
citizenship (whatever its outer limits) is its nature as rooted in ‘market citizenship’ (Everson
1995), offering free movement rights premised on participating in the economic life of the
host member state (and on avoiding being an economic burden on its resources). The current
notion of citizenship is built on a continuum of half a century of legal developments that
started as mobility rights for European workers and others who are economically active, first
introduced in the 1950s (Maas, 2007; Olsen, 2008). The concept of allowing economically
‘useful’ individuals entry to other member states as well as access to a range of economic
benefits while there, is a thin and legalistic notion, falling short of the depth and breadth of

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national citizenship, if indeed it can be called ‘citizenship’ at all (Kochenov, 2007; Maas,
2008; Bellamy, 2008). Moreover, and crucially, as many have noted since the 1990s, women
are generally disadvantaged in such an equation on account of their caring and domestic
roles which mean women, on the whole, are less likely to be able to take up paid work or
stay in paid work once they have children, even if they had migrated as workers (Flynn,
1996; Scheiwe, 1994; Ackers, 1994, 1996; see also O’Brien 2009).

Even now, with the notion of citizenship incorporated in the TFEU, the most fundamental
right, to ‘move and reside freely within the territory of the member states’, is subject to the
limitations and conditions laid down in the TFEU (Art. 21(1)), making it worth more to
those who are economically active. For instance, mobile EU workers are granted a right of
residence beyond three months, a right to be joined or accompanied by family members
(regardless of nationality) and a right to social and tax benefits for themselves and their
families (Tryfonidou, 2009). It is, of course, true that the Citizenship Directive (2004/38/EC)
grants a general (up to) three-month residence to all EU citizens, regardless of involvement
in economic activities. It is also true that the Court of Justice has, in the name of European
solidarity, interpreted the provisions of the Treaties and the Directive very expansively,
filling gaps and granting non-discrimination rights to even some economically inactive EU
citizens (starting with a legally resident unpaid carer in Case C-85/96 Martínez Sala and
student in C-184/99 Grzelczyk). However, even with the celebrated extensions (more
cautiously approached by relatively few, see below), the fact remains that the citizenship
rights belonging to all EU citizens are much more limited than those based on being
economically active.

Regarding care work specifically, it can be argued that EU law’s lingeringly market-oriented
citizenship fails to recognize gendered divisions in caring roles which also result in divisions
in the labour market, as caring for children or elderly relatives is not easily compatible with a
formal employment position. The often mentioned citizenship case Martínez Sala that
extends the principle of non-discrimination to a legally resident mother who was not
engaged in paid work is also taken to confirm that unpaid care does not qualify as ‘work’
under EU law (Shaw, 2002: 222). It thus fails to deliver the citizenship benefits accruing to
those in paid work. While other cases, such as Baumbast (C-413/99) and Zhu and Chen (C-
200/02) recognize the indispensable role that unpaid carers (whether or not EU citizens) play
e.g. in enabling the worker to work outside the family, it can be argued that the EU legal

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structures reinforce gender difference by ignoring care work as a necessary part of life and
by failing to tackle its gendered foundation (Scheiwe, 1994; Ackers, 1994, 1996, 2004).
While an unpaid carer woman may be able to claim EU rights on the basis of her partner’s
status as an economic actor, the ‘parasitic’ nature of these family rights induces dependency
within families and places carers in a vulnerable position (Ackers, 2004).

In summary, there can be no doubt that EU citizenship represents a ‘ highly differentiated

opportunity’ (Ackers, 2004: 391, see also Kochenov, 2007). It explicitly excludes TCNs and
implicitly many who are not economically active and/or making use of free movement
opportunities. These limitations have been much discussed, as has the possibility that the
notion’s inclusive potential may one day overcome them (Kostakopoulou, 2008; see also
Joppke, 2010a; Wollenschläger, 2011). Analyses of these exclusions have, however, not
been brought together to see what they reveal about the normative underpinnings of the
European project. Put differently, the situation of non-EU citizens is used to critique the
external exclusiveness of EU citizenship and the situation of EU women to accuse it of
internal gender-bias, but without situating EU citizenship in a fuller and more global
gendered migration context. The debates on migrant care workers, outlined below, provide
an opportunity to do this.

Gendered citizenship, care and migration in Europe

Feminists too have been fascinated by the concept of citizenship. In the context of national
citizenship in liberal democracies, feminists have explored the abstract notion of a ‘citizen’,
behind which arguably lies the image of a man – and usually that of an able-bodied,
heterosexual and middle-class man who engages with his peers in the public sphere.
Traditionally the public face of citizenship has rendered the private sphere invisible and
undervalued women’s conventional responsibilities for the care of children, household and
the elderly (e.g. Walby, 1994; Lister, 1997, 2000; Yuval-Davis and Werbner, 1999). The
unequal responsibilities between men and women in the home, whereby men are ‘let off the
hook’ by women performing societally necessary caring and domestic work, also produce
unequal opportunities in the public sphere, meaning women’s membership in the public
community has been more circumscribed, often associated with derived rights, and remains
the object of ongoing political struggles (Lister, 1997; Kofman et al., 2000; Lombardo and
Verloo, 2009). Feminist work thus reveals the private sphere to be a site of gendered power

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relationships and the private and public spheres to be interconnected through women’s
private work that enables men’s full citizenship and makes women economically dependent.

In the last decade, attention has turned to the consequences of European women’s increasing
economic independence through their entry into the paid labour market. In many European
countries, the push towards increasing female employment, together with unequal and
gendered responsibilities for family work and inadequate state provision for the care of
children and the elderly, has led to a privatised solution: the employment of increasing
numbers of migrant women in (often low-paid) ‘reproductive’ and domestic jobs (e.g.
Kofman et al., 2000; Anderson, 2001; Parreñas, 2001; Andall, 2003; Lutz, 2008). In Europe,
this phenomenon of ‘replacing’ first world women with migrants ‘doing the dirty work’
(Anderson, 2000), is especially obvious in southern EU member states traditionally reliant
on families for the provision of such work. Some speak of ‘care chains’ to describe the fact
that many migrant women leave behind their own families (often to be cared for by female
relatives) to fill the caring needs of the west (Hochschild, 2000; Yeates, 2005). The
processes of such migration ‘reflect the social divisions of class, of wealth, income and
status’ (Yeates, 2005: 3). Some authors express this in terms of ‘racial and gendered
hierarchies’, leading to ‘the concentration of particular nationalities of migrants in low-wage
care jobs that offer little social protection and job security’ (Doyle and Timonen, 2010: 30).

The trend for many European (EU citizen) women to work in the formal labour market and
the consequent need to ‘reconcile’ paid work with family responsibilities highlights the
centrality of care and domestic work as an issue of incomplete gender equality and
(inadequate) public policy. The lack of will by many men to perform work in the home
together with insufficient public options in many EU member states is examined in a
growing literature on gendered ‘care regimes’ and ‘welfare regimes’, and more recently on
how these intersect with ‘migration regimes’, i.e. rules on migrants’ entry and conditions of
residence (Lister et al., 2007; Williams and Gavanas, 2008; Lutz, 2008; Kilkey, Lutz and
Palenga-Möllenbeck, 2010). Implicit in some of these critiques, which typically note that
migrants with lacking or conditional residency rights are being employed in low-skilled jobs
and are vulnerable to exploitation and abuse, is that European women’s greater labour
market participation, their deepening ‘citizenship’, in terms of access to paid work and
economic independence flowing from that, is being bought to the detriment of other women:
‘This scenario of the global care chain captures well the irony of women in the global North

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exercising their right to earn at the expense of the migrant employee from the global South,
both of them unsupported in their care responsibilities by male partners or state provision’
(Williams, 2010: 387, emphasis added).

It is tempting but slightly problematic to treat the ‘citizenships’ of ‘northern’ (European) and
‘southern’ (non-European) women as interchangeable in this way, for they do not describe
the same dimension (Bosniak, 2009). As Lister has noted, citizenship has both ‘internal’ and
‘external’ exclusionary tensions (Lister, 1997). Feminists have traditionally been interested
in women’s exclusion from citizenship in the ‘internal’ sense, i.e. their lacking access to full
citizenship within their (bounded) political communities as paid workers, as active
participants, as full members of society, etc. This (internal) dimension is now being
facilitated for many European women by migrants whose labour enables the former better to
reconcile paid work with family obligations. Migrant workers’ lack of equality and
marginalisation as women without class and racial privilege in this sense is, however, also
due to ‘external’ exclusion. It stems from the exclusionary power of citizenship as
(sometimes disparagingly referred to as ‘mere’) legal status, as nationality, or at least
permanent residence, the security of which citizens obviously have but many migrants do
not, especially if they are ‘irregular’ and legally constructed as outsiders. While these two
dimensions are brought together by the migrant carer dimension, it is unhelpful to conflate
them to imply a ‘transfer’ from migrant carers to other women (Bosniak, 2009: 137), as the
‘citizenships in question are incommensurable, if connected.

Feminist literature is now moving from blanket criticism of the exclusionary nature of ‘EU
migration policies’ (e.g. Gutiérrez Rodríguez, 2007) and discussions limited to non-
European women (Wall and Nunes, 2010) to exploring how migrant women’s multiple
citizenshiplessness (both internal and external) is constructed, how it may change over time
and with what consequences to migrants and their employers (Williams and Gavanas, 2008;
Mundlak and Shamir, 2008). Europe is a well-suited location for such research, because the
EU’s rules on citizenship and (in a more limited fashion) immigration are redrawing the
boundaries between insiders and outsiders. As Maas puts it (simplistically but broadly
accurately), ‘the separation between citizen and foreigner has gradually been replaced by the
distinction between European and non-European’ (2008: 588) – more legalistically, ‘ EU
citizen’ and ‘ TCN’ . The increasing gulf between those (a minority) who have migration
rights and those (the majority of the world’s population) who do not (Joppke, 2010a) is clear

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in the European care migration context. Some otherwise similarly situated women (e.g. in
terms of race and class) are separated by migration rules, including EU law; simultaneously
divisions between others are bridged and complex legal layers are created (including e.g.
transitional arrangements still in force for Romania and Bulgaria, as well as Association
Agreements, not to mention Schengen and visa lists for TCNs).

The obvious example of the shifts involved is the recent enlargement of the EU towards the
east. Even in the absence of immediate full EU-wide right of free movement (as workers),
the 2004 and 2007 enlargements allowed easier migration (initially via visa-freedom) for
many central and eastern European women. Doyle and Timonen (2010), focusing on migrant
care workers in Ireland, some of whom are now EU citizens (e.g. Polish), and others who are
not, have illustrated the significance of legal status, including EU citizenship. Filling the care
gap caused by Irish women’s increasing formal employment has involved a fair degree of
de-skilling and informality for all migrant workers and, for many with children, also
‘transnational mothering’. At the same time, EU citizen women’s experience is also much
more secure because of their status acquired through care work. Most notably, as free
movers they can migrate easily and legally, reducing their dependency on both their
employers and state discretion (despite the usual obstacles all migrants face, such as
language, awareness of rights, etc.). They can visit their families in their home member state
and/or bring their spouses/children to Ireland or indeed ‘import’ their parents to look after
their children while they work. In contrast, non-EU citizen women (unless married to an EU
citizen) generally lack this legal security and, consequently, for many their primary goal is to
secure (more permanent) legal residency (Doyle and Timonen, 2010: 44) and prove they are
wealthy/integrated enough to be granted family reunion (again, issues EU citizen-workers
need not worry about).

In short, feminist literature is now paying more attention to the qualitative difference in
experience for migrants who benefit from a right to enter, stay and work, which is sometimes
taken for granted by some who have it, but never by those who do not (see e.g. Lutz and
Palenga-Möllenbeck, 2010). This right obviously does not fix everything and the external
side of citizenship interacts with factors such as class and racial privilege. Just as for many
non-EU migrant women, for many central and eastern European women migration was and
is an opportunity to improve their economic circumstances, but an opportunity that comes at
a cost. Many migrants have been exploited and workers from the new member states, though

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EU citizens, have generally concentrated in the informal, flexible and low-skilled sectors
(notably in care and domestic work but also services and construction); care and domestic
work in particular also remain informalised work and are sometimes even excluded from
normal labour law protections (Lutz, 2008). This reflects the fact that caring and domestic
work, even when paid, are intimate and undervalued work that uneasily straddles the
public/private divide for those involved. This in turn highlights the persistence of
reproductive and household work, even when paid, as a continuing feminist issue: necessary
work that is now often outsourced to migrant workers, yet undervalued as ‘women’s work’.

To sum up, this section has shown that feminist analyses of citizenship in the context of care
highlight the links between the public and the private on the one hand and women’s internal
and external exclusions on the other. The supply of paid carers from the new member states
and from outside the EU has allowed the unequal gender arrangements in place for care in
EU member states to be ignored – but the prevalence of migrant caring also links EU citizens
and TCNs in multiple ways that enable a critical examination of EU citizenship as both a
gendered and globalised construction.

EU citizenship in light of gendered citizenship, care and migration

This part of the paper uses the literature on gendered citizenship and migration to
contextualise EU citizenship. Specifically, the research on migrant care workers can be used
to interrogate the role of EU citizenship in the politics of welfare state retrenchment, in the
political economy of Europe and in the EU’s relationship with the rest of the world.

Debates on EU citizenship often revolve around more or less optimistic analyses of what it
can offer and to whom – in particular, who could feasibly be granted its benefits (TCNs,
non-workers, etc.), either now or potentially in the future (a theme, of course, of much of the
post-national literature). This makes sense as EU citizenship is, certainly, both a
differentiated and a tremendously fast-expanding source of rights (for the latest revolution,
see C-34/09 Zambrano). As mentioned above, the Court of Justice has extended the reach of
the originally market-based citizenship concept to those who are not economically active and
turned it into a source of access to social rights for them (Giubboni, 2010). In much more
modest ways, it has also extended these notions to some TCNs (see Carrera and Wiesbrock,

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2010). Particularly lawyers have sometimes tended to marvel at (if also critique the internal
logic of) the Court’s activism without questioning the ostensible success story of expanding
EU citizenship (e.g. O’Neill and Sandler, 2008). The feminist migrant carer literature can be
used to add to the critical perspectives querying the progressiveness of EU citizenship. It
casts light on two assumptions: first, that the expansion of citizenship will one day include
all EU citizens on a near-equal basis because of enhanced European solidarity and second,
that TCN exclusion can eventually – though not in the near future – if not be overcome (by
making European citizenship residence-based), at least mitigated through fairer and more
inclusive treatment of TCNs.

Regarding the first assumption, Joppke (2010a) argues, from a gender-neutral macro-
perspective, that the expansion of EU citizenship, especially regarding social entitlements to
economically inactive individuals, must have consequences for social policies at the level of
EU member states (see also Joppke, 2010b; Bellamy, 2008). This trend may in fact pull in a
different direction than many self-confessed post-nationalists would hope. Joppke argues
that the expansion of the beneficiaries of European rights (and the rights’ widening scope)
will place member states’ understanding of the social benefits of citizenship under strain.
This will eventually lead to a ‘lightening’ of social citizenship: in effect, downsizing of the
member states’ welfare state (Joppke, 2010a). Indeed, Somek has argued that the substance
of EU citizenship is explained by profound individualism and that the European idea of
solidarity is fundamentally different from the idea of solidarity underpinning member states’
welfare systems, and in fact exists in opposition to it (Somek, 2007). Menéndez (2009) has
similarly claimed that the Court’s expansive interpretations of free movement and
citizenship entitlements advance a conception of European integration that may seem
progressive in individual cases, but it is just that – individual. This works against a collective
distributive logic by focusing on individual solutions and strengthening the power of those
EU citizens who already are most resourceful and mobile (possibly to the long-term
detriment of those EU citizens who are least empowered already).

When read in light of the gendered citizenship literature, these analyses point to profound
feminist concerns. Insofar as EU citizenship is gendered, as outlined above, the
consequences of ‘lightening’, encouraged by the individualistic EU citizenship case-law that
corrodes national solidarity (Somek, 2007; Menéndez, 2009) must also be gendered. The
recent Europe 2020 strategy aims at ‘75% of the 20-64 year-olds to be employed’ (European

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Commission, 2010b: 3). This aim of encouraging, if not compelling, employment confirms
an existing trend – EU citizen women’s growing labour market participation – but also
reflects the increasing emphasis on ‘contributing’ economically as a condition of citizenship.
While Daly (2010) is right that the current situation is not yet a ‘dual adult worker model’
(but more a 1.5 worker model because women with children often work part-time), the aim
makes it clear that care will remain an issue in Europe. Indeed, considering not only the
growing labour market involvement of EU women, but the demographic transition underway
in most member states, which is leading to a rapidly ageing Europe with higher dependency
ratios (European Commission, 2005), the care dilemma is not only unlikely to disappear but
will become more crucial.

There has been a longstanding silence in the debates around EU citizenship and EU law
generally about the gendered caring and migration arrangements implied by the ‘adult
worker’ model (nothing new of course – see Scheiwe, 1994; Ackers, 1994, 1996). Many
member states too have been content to leave the organisation of care to the private sphere.
However, the Court’s case-law is pushing the ‘lightening’ trend (Joppke 2010a) in social
policy precisely at a time when member states also keen to reduce their social welfare
expenditure because they are financially stretched. At the same time care is finally being
recognised as an issue for public policy (European Commission, 2005), so it seems that just
when care is becoming an exigent concern, more state involvement in organising it is
actually becoming unlikelier, especially where the state’s role has traditionally been weak
and reliance on families (women) as informal care providers strong. On the contrary, EU
citizenship’s model of solidarity accelerates the shift in the allocation of social welfare tasks
away from the state (Somek, 2007), either (back) to families (women) and/or to markets. As
the former are now increasingly unable to provide because of employment commitments, the
latter will be relied on, increasing the commodification of care. It is precisely in this growing
private space where the migrant care worker is located, doing the second shift of ‘women’s
work’, which allows the postponement of necessary but unpleasant renegotiations of care
and household work arrangements.

The growing demand for migrant carers also raises questions about the second assumption,
that TCN exclusion will eventually be overcome or at least alleviated. Joppke notes that the
exclusion of TCNs, politically inevitable as it is at present, is accompanied by a ‘stinging
sense’ that free movers should be treated equally, regardless of nationality (Joppke, 2010a:

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26). The idea of a residence-based EU-citizenship that would include (some) TCNs is floated
as a long-term goal for EU citizenship (Kochenov, 2009; Maas, 2009; Giubboni, 2010).
However, insofar as it is argued TCNs should have EU citizenship rights, the extension is
implicitly intended especially (or only) for those who are best ‘market citizens’ – legally
resident, economically useful, mobile, educated and so on (Reich, 2005; Maas, 2009,
Giubboni, 2010). Indeed, to the extent TCNs have EU rights now, these are entrenched in
‘market citizenship’ which is thus being rebuilt for them at the same time it is to some
degree being dismantled for EU citizens (Bell, 2007). It remains unlikely that TCNs would
be included as free movers, at least without stringent conditions that would make the right
inaccessible to most potential migrants. Yet in some ways this is inevitable: European
integration was never going to eliminate borders altogether and establish a global right to
move. As Lindahl (2006) argues, all political communities are bounded and European Union
is no exception. In that sense the question is always going to be about the legitimacy of the
EU’s self-ordering regarding the interests of those it excludes by (re)drawing Europe’s
boundaries (Lindahl, 2008, 2009).

The insight is also pertinent for the carer phenomenon, as it is likely that in the future central
and eastern European EU citizens will not be providing the solution for the EU’s labour
shortage (Favell, 2008). For an optimist, the likelihood of more demand for TCNs’ work
might imply there is potential for carers’ inclusion through ‘market citizenship’ – after all,
carers are, as paid workers, economically active. However, a closer look at the TCNs that
member states are willing to admit through legal channels shows a strong preference for a
very specific kind of market citizen, the highly-skilled (hence initiatives like the EU Blue
Card). The UK’s move to a points-based immigration system that has suspended TCN
migration for temporary low-skilled work is just one example. The previously mentioned
Europe 2020 strategy aims at greater economic contribution by women, older workers and
the ‘better integration’ of [existing] migrants and envisages a ‘comprehensive labour
migration policy which would respond in a flexible way to the priorities and needs of labour
markets’ (European Commission, 2010b: 8, 17). There is, however, no European consensus
on the formal admission of less-skilled TCNs, especially to sectors that are informal and
feminised and to which resident women, older workers and already-present migrants might
be pushed. The same factors that make TCN migrant women the obvious ‘solution’ to the
care crisis now – they are cheap and flexible, prepared to work irregular hours with low pay,
especially if they are in a precarious legal situation – make it unlikely they would get

13
Council sanction as ‘TCN market citizens’ (especially considering Council awareness of the
Court’s tendency to take an expansive view of the rights of those admitted).

Thus, even with the lightening of the substance of citizenship, the status side of (EU)
citizenship is unlikely to lose its significance for less skilled non-EU citizens who are not
recognised as essential for Europe’s economy. There may be demand for migrants to
perform care and domestic work but there is also a cynical awareness that supply is plentiful,
as long as the comparative economic advantage of Europe acts as a draw for migrants from
poorer areas. One of the paradoxes of EU citizenship is that those TCNs from the EU’s near-
abroad who could most use a right to migrate do not have it and are not likely to get it. At the
same times most of those who have the right of free movement never make use of it. The
European Commission (2010a) laments that in 2009, only 11.7 million EU citizens were
living in another member state – there are far more TCNs than that living in the EU (Maas,
2008: 584). This may be the key: in sheer numerical terms, EU citizens’ free movement
poses a ‘lesser risk’ to member states – and yet even there the famous fears over too many
free movers from eastern Europe after the enlargements (Favell, 2008) show how fragile the
commitment to EU citizenship is. This raises the issue of the contingency and instability of
EU citizenship itself (Maas, 2009). A return to ‘market citizenship’ for TCNs, together with
lightening citizenship in the member states, can in fact logically result in increasing, not
decreasing (as many see it now), differentiation between individuals who are economically
useful (or at least resourceful) and those who are not, with only the former, perhaps
regardless of nationality, seen as meriting full inclusion. This could imply not only partial
inclusion for TCNs but indeed might herald a (re)turn towards market-citizenship for EU
citizens.

In light of the care issue, it is clear that the trend away from state provision towards
individual responsibility and privatised solutions together with economically contributing
citizenship and redrawn, but maintained, EU borders will have uneven impacts. The effects
on individuals most obviously depend on nationality, gender and class. EU citizens of course
have the benefits of that status, which even when light(er) in substance, differentiates them
from non-citizens, especially those with irregular status. For many individual migrants, e.g.
new EU citizen women performing care work, their inclusion, through work, as (EU)
citizens has also been beneficial (cf. Flynn, 1996: 291). Care work as paid (as opposed to
unpaid) work may be empowering for some migrants and even subversive (e.g. if it allows

14
migrants to reverse the existing gender balance in their families). Many middle-class
professional women, often but not exclusively EU citizens (consider e.g. wealthy non-EU
citizens, like many US citizens), have the resources and support to become more ‘equal’ to
men as workers and to obtain services in the market to plug the care gap (e.g. Anderson,
2000, Lister et al., 2007). These services will, however, be provided by women less
privileged both in terms of race and class and in many – but not all – cases, nationality.
Nationality and migration status keep many female migrant workers as a new ‘service caste’
in Europe (Andall, 2003), necessary but undervalued. Also poorer women who are (EU)
citizens but not able to rely on the market to buy care services will struggle further with
meeting caring needs in the age of ‘light’ citizenship.

From a less individual perspective, the development whereby groups of migrant and also less
privileged non-migrant women (must) enter the wage labour force in segregated, low/de-
skilled, poorly paid jobs, is a continuation of a patriarchal capitalist trend that entrenches
inequalities and keeps issues around care and domestic work, and now migration,
marginalised in terms of the broader political economy of the EU. Care remains a vague
women’s issue, a private problem, and care and domestic work partly informalised ‘women’s
work’, even when paid. This is so even though, as Kilkey (2010) has observed, middle-class
men too now sometimes seek paid help (often provided by male migrants) to help them
better reconcile family life and work (e.g. by doing garden maintenance and repair tasks).
Yet this has actually resulted in little ‘de-gendering’ of such work or scaling back of hours
devoted to paid work (meaning adjustments are not made to accommodate men caring for
their children, etc.). On the contrary, by ‘outsourcing’ men are doubly ‘let off the hook’,
transferring ‘their share’ of domestic labour to the market and often leaving the managing of
it to their partners, free to work full time with little disruption (Kilkey, 2010). The (male)
full-time worker, apparently unburdened by caring responsibilities, thus retains his
normative value as a model of (EU) citizenship both for insiders and outsiders. This model is
one to which everyone should aspire, yet only attainable for the most resourceful and
powerful individuals, and to many of them only when supported by the invisible work of
others.

In summary, EU citizenship is part of an international division of labour, implicating gender,

race, class and nationality and entailing increasing inequalities between groups of women
(and also men) (Anderson, 2000; Lutz, 2008). While in the context of feminist care and

15
domestic work literature this observation is commonplace, much literature on EU
citizenship, even by feminists concerned about care provided by EU citizen women (e.g.
Ackers, 2004) has been silent on the issue of (paid) care as a European policy issue that
connects European citizens to TCNs. The rise in paid migrant care work, the demand for
which will only be increasing in the future, should be grounds for seeking to (re)politicise
the legal boundaries of EU citizenship and the globalised and gendered organization of care
in the household.

Conclusion

The paper has involved a normative evaluation of EU citizenship grounded in research into
gendered citizenship, care and migration. Those interested in EU citizenship could benefit
from contextualising it within the gendered social and political context of ‘lightening’
citizenship that, in the context of care and domestic work, also challenges the apparent
insularity of EU citizenship and shows its connection with Europe’s global environment. The
privatised solution to the care deficit is consistent with and encouraged by EU citizenship but
implies mixed results for the EU’s other agenda, that of seeking to reduce inequalities.

Acknowledgements
This paper has its origin in a presentation to the conference ‘Beyond Citizenship: Feminism
and the Transformation of Belonging’ (July 2010), Birkbeck, University of London. The
author would like to thank the conference participants as well as the two anonymous referees
and Michael Debenham for their constructive feedback.

WORD COUNT: 7,999

Date of the revised manuscript: 19 January 2012

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