Introduction: citizenship along gendered and generational divides

This work highlights the extent to which EU citizenship is different for women and men, for the young and the old, for those who stay in their own country and for those who move within the European Union. It covers diverse aspects of EU citizenship ranging from the political citizenship of young Europeans, the civil and social rights of migrant care workers, reproductive rights and variations in family law among Member States, to EU gender politics and policies. Social, economic and civil citizenship rights related to gender equality and care arrangements have been high on the agenda of the EU for a long time. Because most of these EU policies have been implemented only via ‘soft law’ – the open method of coordination (OMC) and benchmarking, which are not free from ambiguities or tensions (Room, 2005; Verloo, 2005) – they are sensitive to national political agendas. More than any other social dispute they seem to be very much influenced by national and cultural and institutional path dependency, and therefore form a barrier to equalizing the status of all European citizens by EU policy.