Geographies of Families in The European Union: A Legal and Social Policy Analysis

The social and legal changes in the geographies of families in Member States encourage the European Union to reconsider its traditionally prudent approach to family law. Indeed, the free movement of people, an essential characteristic of European citizenship, requires legally established family statuses to be ‘portable’ abroad. Furthermore, the variety of national regulations favours marriage and reproductive mobility, thus forcing domestic and European legislatures and courts to challenge the definitions of family found in the law and in social policy in the name of the right to family life and the principle of non-discrimination. Hence, this article starts by discussing the various notions of family that emerge from domestic laws and social policies in six EU Member States with different legal, cultural, and social backgrounds (Italy, Spain, Denmark, the Netherlands, Croatia, and Hungary). It then delineates the role of Europe and the social and legal interactions between Member States in the construction of a definition of family. Finally, it concentrates on cross-border reproductive care, a case study that allows for shedding light on the convergences among countries, as well as the role of Europe as a supra-national institution and as a space in which family models circulate and spread. The main conclusion is that a multilevel analysis of the notion of family shows the circularity of interactions top-down and bottom-up between Europe and individual States, as well between society and law.