How did EU Citizens Experience Belgium’s Policy of Expulsion and Removal?

The issue of experiencing illegality as EU citizens is here explored through analyzing the case study of Italians in Belgium who saw their residence permit removed by state authorities. This example shows how becoming undocumented is the result of “a legal production of illegality” and that social policies switch from being instruments of protection for groups at risk of social exclusion to being instruments incentivizing individuals to participate in the labour market and consequently rejecting “unproductive migrants” from the social system. EU citizenship and freedom of movement within member states is thus questioned and conditioned to some other socio-economic issues. The notion of “deservingness” highlights 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. Strategies are developed within an emerging discourse of a “moral economy of deservingness” and they respond to the individuals’ precarious statuses.