During the process of EU enlargement to the East, the “Roma problem” has increasingly gained a central position in the EU citizenship discourse. Despite the centrality of the Roma issues, however, the Roma themselves are still understood and conceptualised as outsiders. Their reality of being and becoming EU citizens has remained marginal to definitions of what the EU citizenship is or should be.
This thesis explores the potential of the EU citizenship in improving the lives of marginal citizens such as the Roma. Firstly, through a phenomenological and existentialist approach, it investigates the EU citizenship as a Roma reality. Secondly, from an Aristotelian perspective, it considers how the Roma envision, pursue, and practice their ideas of the good life as marginal EU citizens.
Drawing from the analysis of eighteen semi-structured interviews (conducted among Romanian Roma migrants living in a big city in Northern England) and supplementary ethnographic data, this thesis indicates that the reality of the EU citizenship, for the participants of this study, is a complex and conflictual process of becoming, which is poorly addressed by current conceptual and political structures.
By proposing the notion of the “flourishing EU citizen” this thesis attempts to fill this gap, at least conceptually. Additionally, it makes an empirical contribution to debates on the EU citizenship and Roma migration by providing a holistic view of the experiences of the Roma in this context.
Finally, it indicates two priorities. Firstly, it proposes further research exploring the spaces and places in which conflictual ideas of the good life are recognised and resolved. Secondly, it suggests that the EU citizenship needs to be understood as responsibility and in terms of shared vulnerability in order to accommodate the diversity and complexity of these ideas.
