Migrant mobilities in Europe: Comparing Turkish to Romanian migrants

Abstract

Besides huge differences in attitudes towards the European Union (EU), it seems to be common sense in nearly all strata of EU member states’ societies that the EU created a common and seemingly borderless space of mobility for its inhabitants. Sometimes this characteristic is not only the first positive thing that comes to people’s mind when asked about the Union but also the only one. This paper investigates to which extend Turkish migrants as third-country citizens residing in EU member states make use of this mobility space in a physical and non-physical manner. Data on Romanian migrants is used to contrast these findings. The analysis builds on recent survey data on transnational activities of migrants and nationals in six EU member states (Denmark, Germany, Italy, Romania, Spain and United Kingdom) collected by the EUCROSS study. It is found that a considerable part of the interviewed Turkish migrants visited other EU member states recently, but that, nevertheless, intra-EU mobility is less common in their case than for migrants from Romania. However, this difference can neither exclusively nor mainly be explained by the absence of European citizenship or by the residence within or outside the Schengen space.