‘Migrants’, ‘Mobile Citizens’ and the Borders of Exclusion in the European… 165 other high-income countries’ immigration policies are often characterised by trade-offs between ‘openness’ and some ‘migrant rights’, that is, labour immigration programmes that are more open to admitting migrant workers are also more restrictive with regard to specific rights (especially social rights). Public debates and policy-making on immigration vary across countries but they are typically framed in highly consequentialist terms, i.e. based on the (perceived and/or real) costs and benefits of particular admission policies and restrictions of migrants’ rights for the host economy and society. This cost-benefit approach to policy-making has been a long-standing feature of labour immigration policies. Arguably, it is also becoming an important factor, and in some European countries the most important consideration, when it comes to polices towards asylum seekers and refugees. Some European countries’ recent policies toward refugees and migrants fleeing conflicts and violence in Syria and other places are primarily shaped by the perceived impacts on the national interest of the host country rather than by humanitarian considerations, protection needs or respect for international refugee conventions. A central feature of national migration policy debates in European and other high-income countries is the idea of ‘control’ i.e. the idea that immigration and the rights of migrants can be controlled and regulated, at least to a considerable degree, based on the perceived costs and benefits for the existing residents of the host country. Of course, states’ control over immigration is never complete and subject to a number of constraints but the idea of control is still at the heart of national immigration debates and policy-­ making. The perceived ‘loss of control’ over immigration has been a major driver of the rise of Donald Trump in the United States, Britain’s referendum vote to leave the European Union, and the growing support for right-wing parties across various European countries. Mobile citizens The policy framework for regulating the movement of EU citizens across member states, and their rights when residing in a member state other than their own, is very different from the restrictions imposed on people from outside the EU (or the EEA, to be exact). The current rules for free movement give citizens of EU countries the right to move freely and take up employment in any other EU country and – as long as they are ‘workers’ – the right to full and equal access to the host country’s welfare state. This combination of unrestricted intra-EU mobility and equal access to national welfare states for EU workers is an important exception to the trade-off between immigration and