Abstract:
The European Union exhibits a contradiction: it claims to be a political community that delivers to its citizens freedom, equality, and other values in Article 2 TEU, but its law allows for an emancipation grounded predominantly in market rationality. In other words, the EU claims to create for its citizens political belonging, but its means of doing so, what I call the law of belonging in the EU, remain contingent upon their economic contribution. The Member States too are an important part of this story: they contribute to the creation of such laws and insist on being the primary sites of reproducing belonging and identity. Traditionally, EU legal scholars treat belonging in the EU as a question of citizenship and rights. I take a different approach: I am interested in uncovering what the EU takes itself to be as a polity (a political community of values) and analysing the contradictions that arise from how it puts these claims into practice.

To do so, I use the concept of social pathology from social theory. A social pathology may be defined as a dysfunctionality that is the result of a social dynamic – a self-reproducing nexus of collective practices – that, apart from its connection to injustice, diminishes the good (or impedes the ends) of those who participate in those practices. A social pathology is more than just a breach of the law, an injustice to an individual, or even structural injustice: it is a self-perpetuating dynamic that is difficult to break from. What I am interested in are thus not actions of individuals or specific judgments and decisions, but broader social practices and institutions. This novel approach allows me to show how the law of belonging in the EU over time produces dysfunctional social dynamics, such as alienation, nationalism, socioeconomic inequality, and status uncertainty.

In this lecture, I will show that EU’s laws of belonging stratify humans within its territory based on economic merit, contrary to its proclaimed values of freedom and equality. By showing the social pathologies of such stratification for those living in the EU’s territory, it will become clear that the EU’s claims and social reality are at odds. Juxtaposing the EU’s value claims with social reality will allow us to see the broader distribution of privileges and burdens among the people living in the EU’s territory.

Bio:
Ana Bobić is the principal investigator of the DFG-funded project ‘Judicial conflict and the reconfiguration of control in the EU constitutional order’ at the Hertie School, and the member of the Editorial Board of the Common Market Law Review. Her research is on the EU’s constitutional theory, judicial interactions in the EU, the constitutional implications of the EMU, and the philosophical aspects of belonging in the EU. Ana is the author of two books, The Jurisprudence of Constitutional Conflict in the EU (OUP 2022) and The Individual in the Economic and Monetary Union. A Study of Legal Accountability (CUP 2024).