A minority within a minority: The experience of citizenship for mobile Roma EU citizens

This thesis critically examines equitable access to citizen and minority rights within the European Union (EU) by interrogating the legal frameworks that underpin the status of citizen and the lived experience of citizenship. Focusing particularly on the right to free mobility – a core pillar of EU Citizenship - it examines the causal mechanisms and disparities faced by mobile Roma EU citizens in accessing their citizenship rights compared to other EU citizens. The study finds that right-wing political actors strategically exploit this legal divide by evoking populist narratives that paint marginalized groups as economic and cultural threats. These narratives irregularize the citizen status of these groups and effectively limit their access to mobility rights, and more broadly citizenship. Employing the Copenhagen School Theory and Intersectional Theory, this thesis uncovers how exclusionary narratives perpetuate systemic inequality and erode universal access to EU citizenship.