Beyond market vs. social citizenship: Economic imperatives and the building of a pan-European labour market

This paper contributes to old and new academic debates concerning European citizenship, and aims to overcome the dichotomy between social citizenship, on the one hand, and market citizenship, on the other. We make the case that European citizenship has been socio-economic by nature, since the emergence of transnational rights was consubstantial with economic freedom and market-building, long before the introduction of EU citizenship status in the Treaty of Maastricht. More specifically, the paper argues that EU socio-economic citizenship is shaped by a functional rationale which has been instrumental in overcoming the profound political divisions over the governance of social rights from the EU level. European elites have consistently presented the gradual unification of a pan-European labour market as a necessary response to the economic imperatives stemming from globalisation, demographic change, digitalisation, increased migration, or climate change. This has implied intertwined recommodifying and decommodifying effects. Three empirical investigations help us to flesh out this claim. First, we revisit the 1990s and consider how the emergence of ‘Social Europe’ happened simultaneously with the push for supply-side policy through the flexicurity and activation paradigms. Then, we look at the ‘Skills’ agenda, which has been a cornerstone of the envisaged pan-European labour market from the 2000 onwards, allowing for versatile adaptation to changing market needs over time. Finally, we examine the European Pillar of Social Rights, as an attempt to address some failures of an ever more integrated pan-European labour market. All this, inevitably, perpetuates the relative disconnection of EU socio-economic citizenship from political participation and belonging, thereby limiting legitimising and polity-building effects.