Multi-Level Citizenship and the Experiences of Roma EU Citizens in the UK: Evidence from Sheffield and Glasgow

This thesis examines how European Union citizenship was experienced by migrant Roma in the UK by asking the following questions. What opportunities did this ‘multi-level’ form of citizenship afford to migrant Roma in the UK? What constraints did it impose on them? How were the opportunities and constraints of multi-level citizenship experienced similarly or differently by migrant Roma in different places in the UK, with a particular focus in this study, on the cities of Sheffield and Glasgow? To answer these questions, the thesis deployed an abductive research strategy that explored both the broader economic, legal and local bureaucratic structures and considered the lived experiences of Roma, via a series of semi-structured interviews with Roma and policy stakeholders conducted in 2017/18 in Sheffield and Glasgow. The thesis shows that the right to free movement entailed in EU citizenship, coupled with important gaps in UK labour markets, presented Roma - who frequently experienced endemic discrimination in CEE countries - with important opportunities to create a better life for themselves. However, the right of EU citizens to reside in a ‘host’ member state comes with conditions, particularly associated with the maintenance of a level of economic ‘self-sufficiency’, which proved difficult for many Roma to satisfy. This created significant hardships for Roma as they negotiated the vagaries of the UK’s flexible labour markets and welfare state. A key finding of this PhD thesis was that many Roma EU citizens were not engaged in the formal labour market and/or welfare state. The primary contribution of this thesis is to show how these opportunities and constraints were experienced by Roma in the UK, but also, crucially, the ways in which they were mediated at the local level leading to common but also divergent experiences for Roma in Sheffield and Glasgow. In so doing, the thesis offers an illustrative example of multi-level citizenship in action, contributing to the broader scholarship on EU citizenship, Roma and EU citizenship, and Roma in the UK.