Freedom of Movement Needs to Be Defended as the Core of EU Citizenship 95 people in terms of one dominant “identity” (…) is not only an imposition of an external and arbitrary priority, but also the denial of an important liberty of a person who can decide on their respective loyalties to different groups’.1 The first reason why freedom of movement ought to be defended as the core of EU citizenship, then, is that it enhances our capacity to understand ourselves and realise ourselves in a more authentic and genuine fashion. Free movement as a recalibration of justice and democracy The second reason why free movement ought to be defended as the core of the relationship between the individual and the EU is because it makes us sensitive to practices of exclusion. The construction of EU citizenship, in particularly within the context of the rights to free movement and non-­ discrimination, has the potential to lead to more inclusive ways of thinking about what freedom, justice, equality and participation should mean in the EU. It also has, however, the potential to lead to more practices of exclusion. The fact that EU citizenship and free movement are not embedded in a sufficiently sophisticated, responsive and democratic institutional structure makes it very difficult for the EU to mediate the social conflict that practices of inclusion and exclusion produce, and to legitimise the choices made.2 There are many different ways to approach and address these issues. In very general terms, the right to free movement and non-discrimination attached to EU citizenship can be understood to correct instances of injustice and promote the inclusion of outsiders: it makes national distributive systems sensitive to the need to incorporate EU migrants who contribute to the host state in an economic and social way. The Court’s case law, and its criteria of ‘a certain degree of integration’ or ‘real link to the host state society’ can be understood as mechanisms that serve to identify which migrants should have a right to access redistributive practices in the host state on account of the fact that they meet the conditions of reciprocity the sustain those welfare benefits. I will not here discuss precisely how EU law attempts to balance the incorporation of outsiders in domestic practices of sharing with the need to sustain the reciprocal or solidaristic nature of those practices (which presume that access is bounded). The wider point that I am trying to make is that free movement makes us sensitive to the structural processes of 1 2 Sen, A. (2010), The Idea of Justice. London: Penguin, 247. See, generally, Witte, F. (2015), Justice in the EU: The Emergence of Transnational Solidarity. Oxford: OUP, 22–37.