Conclusions and Reflection

This book shows that intra-European movement not only raises various practical social and governance issues, but also deepens important theoretical and conceptual issues. This includes fundamental questions concerning the conceptualization within migration studies about its core object of analysis; when can something be considered as migration? In this book this concerns in particular whether to conceptualize intra-European movement as ‘migration’ or ‘mobility’; can those who move in the EU be considered ‘migrants’ in a sociological sense or should they be conceptualized merely as mobile EU citizens making use of their right to free movement? The contestation of this very basic conceptualization reveals not only the political character of some of concepts used in this research field, but also the need for more cross-disciplinary work in the conceptualization of migration, here in particular between sociology and political sciences.