Contestable Demographic Reasoning Regarding Labour Mobility and Migration

Abstract

The essay provides a review of contestable demographic reasoning applied in relation to migration and mobility, in which the notion of the national population as a closed and bounded system still persists. Although free movement of people has been enshrined as one of the fundamental principles of the European Union, their mobility within it remains selective and curtailed in various ways. Drawing on selec­ted studies of labour mobility and migration within the European Union, the authors argue that labour mobility and migration policies continue to categorise people as either more or less entitled to move across the European Union’s internal borders.