one - Introduction

Summary

As a piece of comparative, socio-legal research, this book has three key objectives. First, to describe the development of a framework of formal legal rights for retirement migrants under the free movement of persons’ provisions and, in particular, to critically evaluate the concepts of work and family in Community law and their implications for formal entitlement. Second, to develop a comprehensive and ‘grounded’ understanding of the process and experience of retirement migration as the basis of a more meaningful engagement with European law and policy. Third, to explore the importance of welfare issues in relation to the international migratory movements of retired European citizens who move within the European Union (EU).

The EU itself is not a welfare provider, but rather regulates access to domestic welfare systems. As such, an awareness of comparative social policy and of issues around care and well-being in later life is central to our analysis of the translation of legal rights into material reality and citizenship experience. In order to understand the consequences of a move in retirement (given that the right to freedom of movement is based on a principle of non-discrimination rather than social harmonisation1), the book thus considers the social policy context within each of the six member states that were the focus for the fieldwork. These were Greece, Italy, Portugal, the UK, Ireland and Sweden. Chapters Five, Six and Seven outline and discuss the systems of support for senior citizens in these states.

Within social and political science, citizenship remains a much discussed and highly contentious concept, but typically citizenship entails an association between the individual ‘citizen’ and some form of community. Central in defining the quality of any notion of citizenship is the extent of, and the relationship between, any rights and responsibilities that the status of ‘citizenship’ involves. In practical terms, this usually translates into a situation whereby a citizen can expect access to certain civil, political and social rights, provided that they in return accept certain communally specified responsibilities. In any book that is exploring the international migratory movement of citizens within the confines of the EU, a consideration of the rights and responsibilities of European Union citizenship as formally laid out in the Treaty on European Union (TEU) is an important initial task; particularly given that freedom of movement has long been central to the very idea of EU citizenship.