Cluster 1: Social-Spatial Dynamics

Migration and mobility movements are influenced, and partly even determined, by economic, political, legal, infrastructural, demographic, and environmental conditions of the regions in which they emerge. These movements can, and often do, generate an impact on these conditions. This mutual relationship of social and spatial structures and processes enforces dynamics that vary in time and space.
This MML cluster focuses on topics including, but not limited to:

  • EU Law on Free Movement and Social Rights, its administration in practice in EU Member States, and its subsequent implications for mobile EU citizens.
  • Social rebalancing in the greater EU Single Market including the fight against social dumping through atypical work between social protection and the EU’s economic freedom.
  • The causes of mobile EU workers’ exploitation and liberal opportunity structures at the EU level or enforcement gaps at national levels
  • Social-spatial inequalities caused by neoliberal housing markets forcing a growing number of poor(er) households to move to decreasing places of affordable living.
  • Sparsely populated areas and the impact of eServices to avoid demographic shrinking.