Deserving EU citizenship: The case of undocumented Italian migrants in Belgium

Stemmed from a research conducted in Belgium, this paper aims at exploring the notion of deservingness through the analysis of a specific case study. The increased removal of residence permits from European citizens claiming social security benefits shows that the right of freedom within EU is questioned. We consider in particular Italians migrants who moved to Belgium during the economic crisis that started in 2008. The study of this case lets us highlight that the restriction of the mobility of the poor in general shapes here in terms of “undeserving” the right to freedom of movement and determines further stratifications among migrants. Moreover, migrants finding themselves becoming illegal as result of contextual process, in spite of their non-deportability, need to provide “evidence of deservingness” to re-establish their residence rights. Strategies are developed to this aim within an emerging discourse of a “moral economy of deservingness” and they respond to the individuals’ precarious statuses. Through ethnographic examples, we will analyse these dynamics and propose a conceptualization of citizenship whose actualization is conditioned by further socio-economic issues.