Procedural (in)justice for EU citizens moving to Belgium: an inquiry into municipal registration practices

IF 1.2 3区社会学 Q3 POLITICAL SCIENCE

Citizenship Studies Pub Date : 2022-10-03 DOI:10.1080/13621025.2022.2137944

Roos-Marie van den Bogaard, Ana Correia Horta, Wout Van Doren, Ellen Desmet, A. Valcke

{"title":"Procedural (in)justice for EU citizens moving to Belgium: an inquiry into municipal registration practices","authors":"Roos-Marie van den Bogaard, Ana Correia Horta, Wout Van Doren, Ellen Desmet, A. Valcke","doi":"10.1080/13621025.2022.2137944","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Moving as a French or Dutch citizen to Belgium should be easy, given the freedom of movement of EU citizens. Reality paints a different picture, however. This paper analyses the practices of Belgian municipalities and the Immigration Office as to the registration of EU workers, self-employed, jobseekers and their family members. It is based on a desk study, a survey among a sample of municipalities as well as semi-structured interviews with municipal officials, the Immigration Office and other stakeholders. The paper adopts a legal understanding of ‘procedural justice’, focusing on dimensions of equal treatment and transparency. It shows that the achievement of procedural justice for EU citizens is impaired by divergent and at times questionable practices by street-level bureaucrats. These practices indicate, among others, that varying levels of ‘deservingness’ of residence in Belgium can be observed within the category of mobile EU workers. Furthermore, increased digitalization and the use of intermediaries in the registration procedure facilitate and reinforce differential treatments among EU citizens and their family members.","PeriodicalId":47860,"journal":{"name":"Citizenship Studies","volume":"26 1","pages":"995 - 1010"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2000,"publicationDate":"2022-10-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"5","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Citizenship Studies","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13621025.2022.2137944","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"POLITICAL SCIENCE","Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 5

Abstract

ABSTRACT Moving as a French or Dutch citizen to Belgium should be easy, given the freedom of movement of EU citizens. Reality paints a different picture, however. This paper analyses the practices of Belgian municipalities and the Immigration Office as to the registration of EU workers, self-employed, jobseekers and their family members. It is based on a desk study, a survey among a sample of municipalities as well as semi-structured interviews with municipal officials, the Immigration Office and other stakeholders. The paper adopts a legal understanding of ‘procedural justice’, focusing on dimensions of equal treatment and transparency. It shows that the achievement of procedural justice for EU citizens is impaired by divergent and at times questionable practices by street-level bureaucrats. These practices indicate, among others, that varying levels of ‘deservingness’ of residence in Belgium can be observed within the category of mobile EU workers. Furthermore, increased digitalization and the use of intermediaries in the registration procedure facilitate and reinforce differential treatments among EU citizens and their family members.

查看原文本刊更多论文

欧盟公民移居比利时的程序公正:对市政登记实践的调查

摘要考虑到欧盟公民的行动自由，作为法国或荷兰公民移居比利时应该很容易。然而，现实描绘了一幅不同的画面。本文分析了比利时市政当局和移民局在欧盟工人、个体经营者、求职者及其家庭成员登记方面的做法。它基于一项案头研究、一项对市镇样本的调查以及对市政府官员、移民局和其他利益攸关方的半结构化访谈。本文采用了对“程序正义”的法律理解，重点关注平等待遇和透明度的维度。它表明，欧盟公民实现程序正义受到街头官僚不同且有时有问题的做法的损害。这些做法表明，除其他外，在流动的欧盟工人类别中，可以观察到比利时不同程度的“体面”居住。此外，登记程序中日益数字化和中介机构的使用促进并加强了欧盟公民及其家庭成员之间的差别待遇。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

求助全文

约1分钟内获得全文求助全文

来源期刊

Citizenship Studies POLITICAL SCIENCE-

CiteScore

3.60

自引率

11.10%

发文量

期刊介绍： Citizenship Studies publishes internationally recognised scholarly work on contemporary issues in citizenship, human rights and democratic processes from an interdisciplinary perspective covering the fields of politics, sociology, history and cultural studies. It seeks to lead an international debate on the academic analysis of citizenship, and also aims to cross the division between internal and academic and external public debate. The journal focuses on debates that move beyond conventional notions of citizenship, and treats citizenship as a strategic concept that is central in the analysis of identity, participation, empowerment, human rights and the public interest.