ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the results of more than 100 qualitative interviews in the respective pairs of sending and receiving countries. The results suggest that mobile EU citizens’ experiences can be best understood in terms of labyrinths: Migrants are manoeuvering labyrinths of differing qualities, including size, shape and level of difficulty. While the journeys in such labyrinths differ from one another, we discern specific patterns when applying two comparative analytical angles in the interview analyses. First, the comparison of country pairs focuses on differences and similarities in migrants’ experiences of access and limitations to the portability of social security rights and the related coping strategies. Second, a comparative analysis across country pairs serves as the basis for forging out migrants’ agency within such a labyrinth, focusing on migrants’ experiences and strategies in the confrontation with (limitations to) portability and their (transnational) social security. This analysis makes an empirically based contribution to ongoing scholarly debates by introducing the concept of ‘lived citizenship’ as a participatory dimension of cross-border social citizenship.
