Gender and free movement: EU migrant women’s access to residence and social rights in the U.K.

Abstract

This article examines the gendered effects of restricting EU migrants’ access to rights to residence and to social benefits in relation to work, self-sufficiency and family. It draws on the findings of qualitative research on EU migrant women’s access to social benefits in the U.K. on the basis of residence rights as an EU citizen-worker or family member of an EU citizen-worker. The research included qualitative interviews with providers of advice services on social benefits claims and with EU migrant women in the U.K. The findings point to the ways in which the status of the EU citizen-worker is defined and implemented limits women’s access to and ability to maintain that status and, at the same time, their reliance on the status of family member of an EU citizen-worker. Both have gendered effects in terms of women’s potential exclusion from access to residence and social rights as mobile EU citizens.