There is a popular assumption that the majority of Britons living in the rest of the EU are pensioners, who have exercised their treaty rights to reside in another EU member state post-retirement. In fact, 80% of the UK citizens who have made their homes and lives in the EU27 are below retirement age. Discussing her fieldwork with Britons living in Toulouse, Michaela Benson (Goldsmiths, University of London) examines the significance of European citizenship rights – particularly freedom of movement – for the career and life choices of these Britons and asks what the current agreements on citizens’ rights post-Brexit mean for them.
The British in the EU27 have an image problem
In the 15 years since I started my first research with Britons resident in rural France, I have come face-to-face with and counteracted stereotypes and misrepresentations of the British abroad, in academic conferences; in talking with friends, family and colleagues; and even within these British populations. Most recently, discussing our research into how British populations abroad are represented in UK parliament, Chantelle Lewis and I draw attention to how stereotypes of the British abroad as pensioners has pervaded UK parliamentary and policy concerns, working age populations and their concerns rarely getting a look in. As the legal status of these UK citizens is rewritten through the Brexit negotiations, it is time to put these stereotypes to bed.
What if I told you that nearly 80% of UK citizens who have made their homes and lives in the EU27 are below retirement age? According to the Office for National Statistics the majority of UK citizens living in the EU27 are of working age. It is therefore even more surprising that there is so little information circulating publicly about the lives of these working age Britons.
In our UK in a Changing Europe funded research talking Brexit, freedom of movement and citizenship with UK citizens living in the EU27, we have actively sought to ensure that the research addresses the diversity of age within this population. Testament to this is that 67% of our citizens’ panel—an element of the research that includes UK citizens living across the EU27—are between 20 and 60; in France and Spain, where we have been conducting interviews, recruitment has similarly succeeded in bringing students, young people raised in these countries, those migrating in pursuit of careers and relationships, into the frame. Our conversations with these populations highlight what freedom of movement—a central pillar of European integration—has meant for their lives, and the limits current agreements about citizens’ rights place on their ability to live their lives unchanged.
What has freedom of movement ever done for UK citizens?
Many of the working age Britons who have taken part in the research are those who benefitted from right to move and reside freely written into the Maastricht treaty. Conducting interviews with UK citizens in Toulouse, a fast-growing French city with opportunities, particularly within its aerospace industry, conducting research with UK citizens has offered insights into how migration had coincided with changes in employment. This is not a straightforward story about labour migration, where migration directly correlates with the pursuit of work. Personal accounts listed motivations including redundancy in the UK, prompting a move to France to explore possibilities; giving up work to accompany or rejoin a spouse who had a contract in Toulouse; but also pursuing posts in specialist research units based in the city. Locating these accounts within a broader context reveals how freedom of movement functioned for people as they navigated changing labour markets.
Emily, a 30-year old postdoctoral researcher was two years into a three-year contract in a specialist research laboratory in one of the city’s university. She planned to transition into the private sector at the end of this contract, but was worried that Brexit might make this plan more difficult to achieve. She was particularly worried that being British might disadvantage her in this competitive job market. The broader contexts here include an increasingly global research environment – Emily had already spent a couple of years working in the US after finishing her PhD in the UK—and the growing use of short-term contracts to employ academic researchers. Being mobile had, until now, facilitated her career.
Others recounted how their partners had been made redundant in the UK, and they had moved to Toulouse – often with young families – hoping that they might find work in the growing aerospace industry. Importantly, while there were many people who came to Toulouse with contracts already in hand, others were far more opportunistic. It often took some time to get into the system, to create the right networks and to find work – including having qualifications and experience recognised (formally and informally). The right to live and work in the EU was undoubtedly one mechanism that supported these migrations; post-transition, it remains to be seen how freely UK citizens might try and find work in another member state.
Freedom of movement: an oxymoron
The examples above are probably exactly what you might expect freedom of movement – a right commensurate with European citizenship as a market citizenship – to allow. But I want to turn to a final case that focusses on continued mobility with the EU. This is not so much the frontier and cross-border workers, whose rights have at least in principle been considered within the draft withdrawal agreement, but about those, often young UK citizens, who have used their citizenship to move around the EU. Take the example of 21 year-old Sam; in the last six months he had lived and working in France, Poland, Germany, the Czech Republic and Spain. He picked up casual work in each of these places, sometimes for payment, other times just for accommodation.
Freedom of movement as a right was not designed with this type of mobility in mind, but it is clear that EU citizenship has been used in this way, particularly in the case of young people who were struggling to find work and pay for housing in the UK. In fact, freedom of movement was never really about mobility. It was designed with an archetypal labour migrant in mind; one who came to work, and settled for that period in the country where they worked. Translating freedom of movement into citizens’ rights for the withdrawal agreement, this presumption of settlement is made all too visible. At present, the right to remain relies on demonstrating lawful residence, in itself a legal mechanism that relies on continuous residence in one country, often demonstrated by an address, bills, employment contracts.
Remembering the 80%
I started out this post by highlighting that UK citizens living the EU27 have an image problem. Groups such as the British in Europe have been battling against this, as they try to get their rights upheld through the Brexit negotiations. It is clear that freedom of movement, beyond what it means in law, has become integral to the practices of UK citizens who have left the UK for the EU. Through the Brexit negotiations, it seems that the limitations of freedom of movement, its tethering to individual nation-states are even more pronounced in the current proposals about citizens rights.
What remains to be seen is how these are enacted and with what consequences for UK citizens who live more itinerant lives in the EU27: those who migrate in search of employment opportunities, and what this means for people coming to end of short-term contracts that fall short of eligibility requirements for lawful residence.
This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Brexit blog, nor LSE.
I’m delighted to see at long last the facts about UK Citizens living in the EU are coming. Sadly, many Conservative MPs think its all about retirement and holiday homes, and they choose to overlook the many families, with children who have carved out a life for themselves across the Union.
Unless there are some major changes to the negotiated agreement on Brexit many of those families face some problems in the future which could threaten their very existence in their country of choice.
As things stand, these are the rights we have at present, that we are losing:
continuing free movement, which is the right to move and reside freely across the EU, and which includes the right to move to live and work in other countries as well as visa-free travel.
set up a business across the EU and have our professional qualifications recognised beyond the country we live or work in. Some PQs not covered at all.
provide cross-border services as self-employed people.
return to the UK with non-UK spouses under EU rules rather than stringent UK immigration rules.
Right to future family reunification with future spouses/family members
You statement ” continuing free movement, which is the right to move and reside freely across the EU, and which includes the right to move to live and work in other countries as well as visa-free travel”
is completely wrong. There is no “right” to live in any EU/EEA country. The only right provided by the EU is the if you have a job offer you can not be refused residency. Then the other right is that you have three months to look for a job and after the three months is up, the country can kick you out but not before. If you want to live and not work in an EU country it is 100% at the discretion of that country and they all apply local national rules, like having to prove you have enough money to not be a burden on the host country or that you have healthcare insurance, etc.
Roger Boaden’s post is not “completely wrong”. ralphmalph’s is, and I write to correct it simply so that further misinformation is not added to the already huge misapprehensions about the rights of UK citizens in the EU. While the UK is in the EU there is a RIGHT, granted by Articles 20 and 21 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union,of free movement and residence. Like many other rights, it is subject to meeting certain conditions, such as not being a burden on the host state, but these are not “100% at the discretion of that country”, but closely controlled by Directive 2004/38 and EU Court of Justice decisions on the Directive. It is a system which, whilst not flawless, has stood us in very good stead for a long time now and on which many people relied before making life-changing decisions to move across the Channel in either direction. What Roger Boaden says about the loss of these rights is completely accurate.
Jeremy, perhaps there is some confusion about the legal meaning of the word RIGHT in the context of the EU Acquis Communautaire scheme of things. As you would know, in the UK the citizens enjoy certain rights pertaining to and derived from their citizenship. Apart from Common Law, vestiges of the Magna Carta, the Constitutions and such appendages as the EU bureaucracy has been able to insert, many of which are not, in law and in practice, inalienable, there are rights which are so called but really privileges of an uncertain interpretation, arbitrary implementation and limited duration.
When it comes to war, or even an unfriendly parting of the ways, not all minutiae of all possible variations and permutations of legal niceties and practical usage is sorted out from the start, or ever. Of course, the entire EU project, as has become bleedingly obvious, was to pull the wool over people’s eyes and present a succession of faits a compli with no recourse to any kind of justice except the kind of EU federalisation project justice projected and put upon EU ‘citizens’.
It’s a con job and the EU Commissars have had their bluff called by the British people in a long waited and extensively debated vote. Now, some privileges are under scrutiny. No doubt, many who bought the EU con job feel hard done by. They have lost no RIGHTS. They might lose some privileges. Actually, in practice, only people who are citizen by birth have the full benefit of citizenship. That is just the way it is, except maybe in the UK, of all the western democracies.
Check out your ‘rights’ as a naturalised citizen elsewhere in the West. It’s nothing like your birthright.
It’s very simple Roger. Many people will have to make a choice, as the electorates in the UK collectively made their choice. Before the EEC, as might not know, people were migrating within Europe and making a living elsewhere, some even getting naturalised in their new home. The figure of 80% of British citizens living in (the rest of) the EU are below retirement age.It did not, wisely or craftily, say ‘ in full time employment’. It would be a different statistic, especially if we look at France and Spain. You don’t have to be above the retirement age to be able to retire. Many expats are managing their financial affairs as part of their self-funded retirement, or dabbling, hobbying, part-timing. Anyway, migration to and from the UK from and into the EU remains will not stop.If you want to roam Europe at will and be able to settle anywhere, pay your way and you will be welcome anywhere, except maybe Switzerland if you don’t have enough dosh.
Why not become a French citoyen? You would have the run of the EU remain countries on your own terms.
It would be interesting to see some figures. I have read of about 45000 who work peripatetically around the EU and not just for casual work. I have worked in 9 countries of the EU27 ranging from 6 months to several years. Losing FoM means losing my ability to work as I do. Then there are those cross-border commuters who may also be hard hit.
But British politicians have studiously ignored our plight whilst crying crocodile tears over the few hundreds that might lose their jobs as a result of the Carillion collapse. We really have no representation by our so-called representatives.
Actually, the best way to get hired in aerospace in Toulouse is to get hired by a uk company, then transfered to a job in toulouse. This you wont have to battle your way through the french recruitement companys and risk getting ‘knocked back’ for employment that is well within your scope or competency (yes! ‘graphology ‘ is widely used as a decider in the french recruitment process-deduct what you wish ) secondo, you will have better remuneration passing by the uk. I do enjoy reading about people who skim over a subject that i know well as its my field of employment (or was) then come up with a easy to explain, or simplistic conclusion based mainly on hearsay. As i worked at a gkn subsidary/supplier in the uk recently, and have worked in the high end manufacturing industry in france for over a decade, its easy for me to see how and what this article was based on. Also all these british expats(or wannabes) who rail on about having their ‘future’ stolen from them in europe when to be employed its a mandatory mastering the local language to native level, pidgin French wont get you hired over the high level of locals perfectly fluent who know the ropes. In fact, after numerous conversations with french living in the uk the conclusion is of high unemployment, low pay and few prospects.idem for the french expats i meet in australia Hence the move away from france. Notably a friend of mine who with a phd in france, 16 years university in france, had to seek employment in Switzerland in a multinational. Having to obtain a carte de sejour in 1987 as i did, and today would be similar- language skills, and job skills. Just because in the uk there are multi lingual brochures and helplines doesnt mean to say in france there is. I suppose during my 19 years living in paris, i had met 4-6 brits employed in france with good jobs, bilingual. The rest were retirees, barworkers, or people eeking out a existance with a dream and a gite. Lastly, if you believe uk immigration is difficult, try australia as i have.
An interesting post, but it ignores one very important point. When the UK voted in the referendum to leave, Theresa May and the likes of Michel Barnier insisted explicitly that the rights then enjoyed by EU citizens in the UK and by UK citizens living and working in the EU would be fully maintained. I haven’t got the quotes to hand but they are there. On that basis, UK citizens living and working in the EU would continue to have free movement rights within the EU, and their work qualifications would continue to be recognised in all EU Member States, not just the one in which they happen to reside on a particular date.
That promise, repeated on several occasions, has not so far been respected. This is absolutely fundamental for UK citizens living and working in the EU. It is not a question of life choices. People took decisions on the basis of the legal situation in the EU at a certain point that they would live and work in the EU, in many cases living in one country but working in a number of different countries. This is particularly true of people in Luxembourg, where the amount of inter-country work is a way of life. Theresa May promised that she would ensure that they would be able to continue to live an work without any change to that. As far as I can see, she is currently doing nothing to implement that promise.
Brilliant.