The differentiated politicization of free movement of people in the EU. A topic model analysis of press coverage in Austria, Germany, Poland and the UK

The free movement of people (FMP) has been a core principle of European Union (EU) integration since its beginnings, but it has recently become contested. This article traces the politicization of FMP, and the topics associated with it, over time and across countries. Rather than constituting a linear or uniform trend, we argue that the politicization of FMP is differentiated: it is driven by particular events such as Eastern enlargement, mitigated by restrictive domestic policies anticipating the expansion of EU free movement rights, and that FMP is salient, but not polarized, from an emigration country perspective. Combining structural topic modelling and qualitative text analysis, we compare three decades of news coverage of FMP in Austria, Germany, Poland and the UK.</p

ECJ Judges read the morning papers. Explaining the turnaround of European citizenship jurisprudence

<p>Recent jurisprudence of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) marks a striking shift towards a more restrictive interpretation of EU citizens’ rights. The Court's turnaround is not only highly relevant for practical debates about ‘Social Europe’ or ‘welfare migration’, but also enlightening from a more general, theoretical viewpoint. Several recent studies on the ECJ have argued that the Court is largely constrained by member state governments’ threats of legislative override and non-compliance. We show that an additional mechanism is necessary to explain the Court's turnaround on citizenship. While the ECJ extended EU citizens’ rights even against strong opposition by member state governments, its recent shift reflects changes in the broader political context, i.e., the politicization of free movement in the European Union (EU). The article theorises Court responsiveness to politicization and demonstrates empirically, how the Court's jurisprudence corresponds with changing public debates about EU citizenship.</p