172 F. De Witte But the close link between free movement and Union citizenship has a second exclusionary effect – one that is internal to the EU. On this view, Union citizenship is an advantage for those willing and able to make use of it; but a disadvantage for those who cannot. On this narrative, the ‘immobile’ citizen faces increased competition for jobs and welfare resources from the ‘mobile’ citizen. Citizenship and free movement, then, create winners and losers – a process that became blatantly obvious in the Brexitvote. I would contest this argument both normatively and institutionally. The fact that only a portion of citizens actually make use of their right to free movement does not make the right any less important or relevant. A small proportion of the population makes use of their rights to free association or freedom of expression. Increasingly fewer people use their right to vote. Does that make these rights increasingly less relevant or important? Of course not. The same applies to free movement. The mere possibility of movement, legally guaranteed by free movement and Union citizenship, moreover, also has a reflexive virtue, as picked up by Vesco Paskalev (who highlights that younger Brits – regardless of their exercise of free movement – understand it to be a public good) and Saara Koikkalainen (who shows that 78 per cent of EU-wide respondents support free movement). The possibility of free movement liberates the self-understanding of the individual from the collective self-understanding of the polity they happen to be born in. This does not mean that Union citizenship and free movement offer an equal opportunity of exercise to all Union citizens. As I will discuss below, the EU does not dispose of the institutional framework that can articulate and sustain such an understanding of substantive justice. To be sure, free movement presupposes certain social and cultural resources (if not necessarily those associated with the ‘transnational elite’ – it is hardly against these groups that the Brexit-vitriol was directed). What matters for our argument in this section, however, is not that free movement has high conditions of entry, but that it creates negative effects for those that do not make use of it (for whatever reason). This can be explained in one of two ways. First, and in the most important narrative in the Brexit campaign, it was suggested the EU migrants not only take jobs away from UK citizens, but also welfare resources, and create increased pressure on schools and hospitals. At the same time, every single piece of research that has taken place suggests that the UK benefits fiscally from free movement. How can these two positions be squared? It’s very simple: by the decision of successive UK governments not to invest the fiscal windfall from free movement in additional welfare resources such as schools and hospitals.