Open Borders and Free Movement: Experiencing and Evaluating Mobility Citizenship

This chapter describes and contrasts the migration experiences of mobile Hungarian and Romanian EU citizens in the UK, highlighting the strategies adopted by migrants to overcome the practical limitations they experienced in their opportunities to prosper as EU movers. In framing and comparing these limitations, the chapter builds on an analytic distinction between ‘open borders’ and ‘free movement’. The presented analysis is based on qualitative interviews and ethnographic observations collected in London in 2013, at a strategically important point in time when citizens of the two countries still enjoyed unequal rights on the British labour market.