Earning Social Citizenship: Free Movement, National Welfare and the European Court of Justice

This dissertation engages with the tension between comprehensive free movement rights and national welfare states in the European Union. It specifically considers the role of the European Court of Justice, as a special supranational actor promoting cross-border welfare rights, and studies its impact on the terms and conditions of access to national welfare programmes. Analysis moves beyond doctrinal evaluation of the Court’s case law by theorising and demonstrating its effects on Union citizens’ access to social assistance and study finance in the Netherlands. The dissertation concludes that this interaction between the Court’s jurisprudence and Member State responses stimulates a synergy around the model of earned social citizenship: the institutions of free movement and national welfare state are reconciled by requiring individuals to ‘earn’ their social citizenship and access to the welfare system through an emphasis on their individual responsibility to fulfil the economic, social and cultural conditions of membership.