EU Citizenship, Free Movement and Emancipation: A Rejoinder Floris De Witte As was to be expected on a topic such as the relationship between free movement and Union citizenship, the discussion above has been both fruitful and wide-ranging, not in the least due to the decision of the British electorate to leave the EU that took place half-way through this EUDO forum debate (and that throws in doubt the rights of residence of Union citizens in the UK, as well as that of UK citizens in the EU). Rather than replying to the many interesting and insightful contributions individually, I will aim to address some of the themes that transcend the various points of view expressed. These are, in my view, three. First, many commentators have suggested that my defence of Union citizenship as being primarily about free movement is insufficiently sensitive to its exclusionary potential. This exclusion may take place at Europe’s borders (think of the refugee crisis), but also within the Member States, where free movement has been understood as being available primarily – and actually – for the young, urban, educated elite. For those left behind – be it at Europe’s borders or at home – free movement, on this account, is not a promise but a problem at the core of Union citizenship. The second theme that can be traced in the discussion is the effect that my understanding of free movement has on the state and its structures. On this view, construing Union citizenship as being centred on its capacity to discipline the nation state and its political processes through free movement creates a number of problems of its own – ranging from the reconstruction of political participation to the destabilization of internal processes of solidarity and will-­formation. The third and final theme that many commentators have picked up on, in different ways, is that understanding Union citizenship as being primarily about free movement offers (at best) a partial, inaccurate and normatively unattractive vision of what the individual European subject is. Union citizenship, on this account, ought to be about more than allowing individuals to escape their nation state and its political or normative preferences. © The Author(s) 2019 R. Bauböck (ed.), Debating European Citizenship, IMISCOE Research Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89905-3_33 169