122 S. Koikkalainen While free movement was originally based on an economic rationale and the desire to provide a flexible workforce for the industry, it has developed into a civic right that might have been impossible to envision without the preceding decades of mobility. The right is also highly valued by the Europeans themselves: in the Eurobarometer surveys,2 freedom of movement consistently ranks high among the things that Europeans value in the EU. In the autumn of 2015, 78 per cent of the respondents supported free movement, even though differences among countries were significant (94 per cent support in Latvia and 92 per cent in Estonia, while only 64 per cent in the UK and 66 per cent in Austria). Free movement is also routinely listed as the most positive or the second most positive result of the EU along with ‘peace among the EU member states’. Therefore, while issues such as access to social security and transferability of pensions across borders are still problematic, it is clear that free movement is, according to the Europeans themselves, at the core of European citizenship. The value of EU citizenship is linked with free movement Europeans take advantage of free movement as students, trainees, professionals, family members, retirees, and workers of different skills and educational backgrounds. Not all are moving for life, as many choose to live abroad temporarily or seasonally or engage in various cross-border activities.3 In response to de Witte, Daniel Thym writes that while he understands the value of free movement for the individual, he also sees the limitations of de Witte’s argument: ‘European rules extend our freedom geographically and in substance, but the surplus remains gradual instead of categorical.’ Thym downplays the exceptionality of a situation where a German pensioner, for example, is free to settle in Spain, instead of just relocating to a more pleasant environment within Germany. However, along with others engaged in research in intra-European mobility, I argue that those who exercise their right to free movement are pioneers of European integration, whose lives and actions impact both the countries of origin and 2 3 Standard Eurobarometer 84, 2015, EC, DG for Communication. First results (Autumn 2015). E.g. Favell, A. (2008), Eurostars and Eurocities: Free Movement and Mobility in an Integrating Europe. Oxford: Blackwell; King, R. (2002), ‘Towards a new map of European migration’, International Journal of Population Geography 8 (2): 89–106. DOI: 10.1002/ijpg.246; Recchi, E. (ed.) (2014), The Europeanisation of Everyday Life: Cross-Border Practices and Transnational Identifications among EU and Third-Country Citizens – Final Report. Available at http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-395269 .