Internal and external movers: East–west migration and the impact of EU enlargement

The growing intra-EU mobility of West Europeans, that is the principle focus of this book, has been a largely unremarked – if not almost invisible – phenomenon in most countries of residence. This is decisively not the case with migrants and movers from East and Central Europe. In the run-up to the two EU accessions of 2004 and 2007, there was a great deal of media coverage of these other ‘pioneers of European integration’, in often very hostile terms. EU enlargement, of course, notionally changes the migration/mobility relationship of East and Central European citizens to the West, from external migrants to internal movers. Supposedly, some day, Polish or Romanian movers (for example), should simply become indistinguishable from their mobile West European counterparts, in rights and opportunities, if not in reality.