Movement but with limitations – mobility in the process of European integration: freedom, identity, citizenship and exclusion

During the process of European integration, mobility has taken on different meanings, roles and relevance, oscillating between positive and fully satisfactory characteristics and elements and negative opinions and judgements, all aspects that this chapter intends to consider and bring into focus. My thesis is that, as with many other Community policies, mobility developed in a complex but advantageous way for a few decades, namely until it was confined to Europeans of the Western bloc; however, it later became an increasingly divisive issue among Member States, which became ever more rigid toward third countries. Mobility rose mainly from the economic and demographic needs of the Member State affected by serious and persistent unemployment, i.e. Italy, but it later became a positive identifying element, especially following its full development thanks to Schengen and its inclusion in the treaties. At the same time, however, migration from third countries has overshadowed the positive aspects of mobility and a system of rules has been created that has substantially delegated some states (especially in the Mediterranean) to bear the burden of migration flows. Furthermore, mobility has become very divisive because it has created a first, rigid opposition between Europeans, following the great enlargement to Central and Eastern Europe, which has favoured a massive migration to Western Europe. The Member States and the European institutions have shown not only a serious inability to manage the phenomenon, but also deep divisions, leading to the emergence of differences that had seemed to be assimilated within the process of European integration. Mobility has been called into question and migration has been transformed from one of the fundamental freedoms of the EEC into a central element of the centrifugal thrust of the integration process, which marks the height of the political crisis of the continent, at national and European level. The double objective of this chapter is to analyse the main stages and themes of mobility in the framework of the integration process and its centrality to the issues of European identity and citizenship up to the early 1990s, while also investigating the role played by Italy, often forgotten in European and international historiography, mainly due to linguistic reasons rather than for its lacking an important role in the definition of some policies, including mobility.