Book Review: Shifting Spaces: Women, Citizenship and Migration within the European Union
| DOI | 10.1177/096466390000900415 |
| Author | Lucie Lamarche |
| Date | 01 December 2000 |
| Published date | 01 December 2000 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
points, however, it would be very difficult to argue that this book is anything less than
essential reading for anyone with an interest in the current process of law reform and
beyond.
RALPH SANDLAND
Law Department, University of Nottingham, UK
LOUISE ACKERS, Shifting Spaces: Women, Citizenship and Migration within the Euro-
pean Union. Policy Press, 1998, 343 pp., £45.
Louise Ackers and her research team decided in this book to look at the situation of
EU female nationals moving within the Union. For the purpose of the study, pro-
visions guaranteeing freedom of movement contained in EU law are considered
fundamental as they provide a basis for citizenship rights through the prohibition of
discrimination, while equality provisions are seen as being little more than a form of
labour market regulation aimed at procedural equality in the workplace. The project
is less concerned with the issue of nationality than with the impact of geography on
resources available to women in their role as caregivers in a context where family poli-
cies fall within the jurisdiction of Member States. Ackers establishes a clear connec-
tion between women’s citizenship inside the EU and the EU’s capacity to act as a
guardian of EU migrant women’s interests, and thus the relationship between per-
sonal dependancy (on male partners) and public dependency (on state or labour
market) is a primary concern of the study. In other words, and although in a still gen-
dered, imperfect and somehow chaotic manner, EU law, as interpreted by the Euro-
pean Court of Justice (ECJ), is seen as the foundation of an evolving modern
European welfare state. Together with Article 17 (ex Article 8) of the EC Treaty which
formally protects citizenship, this jurisprudence must now be considered as more than
the mere appreciation of a collection of Regulations aimed at defining the scope of the
mobility rights granted to workers and their family by the provisions of the main
Treaty.
This book is not mainly a legal study of the situation of EU migrant women
although it provides a useful overview on that topic. The methodology of the research,
which Ackers describes as being feminist, is aimed at revealing the reality of migrant
women as well as their aspirations to attain citizenship within the EU. The central
focus of the project is the storytelling of 100 women in five EU countries on topics
such as family and informal care networks, carers and financial autonomy, identity,
general quality of life and awareness and exercise of community rights. The method-
ology challenges the gendered assumption that women’s decisions to migrate within
the EU are primarily influenced by rational economic family-based factors.
In fact, and as revealed by revisiting Eurostat data and analysing the interviews, EU
migrant women form two different but equally important groups: those who follow
their husbands and those who migrate for other reasons (education, career, travel,
work, other personal reasons). This latter group will often become members of a
family unit in the host state only in a second stage of their migration. Statistical analy-
sis also reveals that female migrants dominate the migration flows from everywhere
except Greece. The breadwinning model is thus not supported by the data and the
reasons for coming to a host state are not always the same as the reasons for staying,
although family building and pre-eminence of male work underpin subsequent
decisions about inter-regional migration and the prospect of returning home.
The interviews conducted by Ackers and her team reveal that for women, repro-
ductive rights and family law are central to their definition of citizenship, offering a
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