Description
Family migration is a hot issue in many of the EU member states. More and more member states are introducing income requirements to ensure that family migrants will not have to rely on public funds, language and ‘civil knowledge’ tests to ensure their successful integration, and minimum age limits to help prevent forced marriages. At the same time, family migration is, to a growing degree, being regulated through EU law. In particular, EU citizens who have made use of their right to freedom of movement within the EU can appeal to EU directive 2004/38 (the Citizenship Directive). Largely stemming from the case law of the EU Court of Justice (ECJ), these mobile EU citizens have acquired extensive rights to family reunification that countervail the restrictive measures, described above, that are being introduced by various member states, the Netherlands among them.In my book The Family and the Nation, I defend the thesis that family migration policies reflect certain assumptions regarding family norms and regarding the relationship between family and state. These assumptions are moreover relevant for notions of substantive citizenship. In this talk, I compare how linked assumptions concerning family and citizenship have informed Dutch family migration policies in the past to how these linked assumptions inform migration policies in the present. I then review the case law of the ECJ to see to what extent it does or does not reflect the same underlying assumptions concerning family relations. Finally, I reflect on what this case law may tell us about the ECJ’s perspective on substantive EU citizenship.
| Period | 13 May 2011 |
|---|---|
| Event title | Conference: Legal Perspectives on Gender and Sexual Equality. |
| Event type | Conference |