EU Citizenship and Everyday Experiences of the Vulnerable

Free movement within the EU is routinely associated with affording accession state migrants opportunities for economic security consistent with definitions of success, a sense of place and upward mobility. However, everyday reality is often more complex as research with accession-8 migrant workers has demonstrated. With work restrictions for migrants from Romania and Bulgaria lifted in 2014, there is renewed need for research examining whether and how obstacles and uncertainty manifest for vulnerable migrants from Romania and Bulgaria living in the UK. This studentship is timely in its focus on the experiences of individuals from these particular communities.
Obstacles faced by non-national EU migrants are aptly conceptualised as producing ‘ontological insecurity’ (Katz, 2008), a profound sense of uncertainty that undermines one’s sense of place. This contemporary, pervasive condition occurs in mundane everyday spaces, yet it is also linked to social and political systems at other scales. To date, this concept and its implications for understanding how structural forces reinforce (im)mobility have not been applied to the experiences of vulnerable accession state EU migrants.
While citizenship studies tend, in the main, to focus on normative approaches to citizenship, this studentship will examine how citizenship and belonging are materialized as everyday formations. The studentship, therefore, aims to critically examine how citizenship is practised amidst the mixed realities that imbue ‘free’ movement for non-national EU citizens.

For further information and details of how to apply, please see our website http://www.geog.leeds.ac.uk/study/phd/funding/white-rose-dtc-esrc-network-studentships/