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To what extent and how do European citizens experience other European societies? Do their ordinary lives incorporate a transnational dimension? Or do they prevailingly perform local and national activities? This article examines a wide palette of individual actions that span over national borders through physical and virtual mobility, aiming to measure their diffusion and single out typical configurations of mobility practices. Empirical data come from a sixcountry comparative study, the Eucross project, that carried out a CATI survey of 6,000 citizens in Italy, Germany, Spain, Denmark, Great Britain and Romania and a follow-up set of 60 in-depth interviews to survey respondents. Through a Latent Class Analysis (LCA) six neatly distinguished types emerged. At the two extremes, there are locals (little if any international contact and mobility) and transnationals (very active on all fronts of transnational behaviours). Inbetween, we identified four more types: tourists (who travel substantially but with little interest for long-term stays and expressive contacts), explorers (who are also quite mobile and focus on interpersonal contacts across borders), repatriates (who experienced long-term mobility but have decreased their mobility thereafter) and virtual transnationals (who are not physically mobile but have strong virtual connections abroad). These types are neither evenly spread across countries nor across social categories, mirroring inequalities and possibly national and cultural differences in managing mobilities.

To what extent and how do European citizens experience other European societies? Do their ordinary lives incorporate a transnational dimension? Or do they prevailingly perform local and national activities? This article examines a wide palette of individual actions that span over national borders through physical and virtual mobility, aiming to measure their diffusion and single out typical configurations of mobility practices. Empirical data come from a sixcountry comparative study, the Eucross project, that carried out a CATI survey of 6,000 citizens in Italy, Germany, Spain, Denmark, Great Britain and Romania and a follow-up set of 60 in-depth interviews to survey respondents. Through a Latent Class Analysis (LCA) six neatly distinguished types emerged. At the two extremes, there are locals (little if any international contact and mobility) and transnationals (very active on all fronts of transnational behaviours). Inbetween, we identified four more types: tourists (who travel substantially but with little interest for long-term stays and expressive contacts), explorers (who are also quite mobile and focus on interpersonal contacts across borders), repatriates (who experienced long-term mobility but have decreased their mobility thereafter) and virtual transnationals (who are not physically mobile but have strong virtual connections abroad). These types are neither evenly spread across countries nor across social categories, mirroring inequalities and possibly national and cultural differences in managing mobilities.

More than half a century ago, a future winner of the Nobel prize in economics assessed the case for multinational monetary integration, concluding that ‘an essential ingredient of a common currency, or a single currency area, is a high degree of [production] factor mobility’ (Mundell 1961: 661). The EU free movement regime and the Eurocrisis provide the ideal conditions for a real-life test of Mundell’s theory: Have workers from the countries most affected by the Eurocrisis in the late 2000s relocated to the most thriving labour markets of the continent? Have open intra-EU borders worked as safety valves for displaced labour? This paper focuses on intra-EU movements in order to determine whether they have indeed changed in size and composition during the recent global crisis. We first draw an overall picture of migrant stocks and flows in Europe before and during the recession based on the Eurostat databases. We find that with the exception of Ireland, other Western economies hit by the crisis were not abandoned en masse as the popular press suggested. In the second step on the basis of cross-sectional Eurobarometer data we examine propensity to migrate to search for work within the EU in 2006, 2009 and 2011. We use multilevel modelling in order to examine the impact of individual resources, and also institutional and economic country effects on migration intentions.

More than half a century ago, a future winner of the Nobel prize in economics assessed the case for multinational monetary integration, concluding that ‘an essential ingredient of a common currency, or a single currency area, is a high degree of [production] factor mobility’ (Mundell 1961: 661). The EU free movement regime and the Eurocrisis provide the ideal conditions for a real-life test of Mundell’s theory: Have workers from the countries most affected by the Eurocrisis in the late 2000s relocated to the most thriving labour markets of the continent? Have open intra-EU borders worked as safety valves for displaced labour? This paper focuses on intra-EU movements in order to determine whether they have indeed changed in size and composition during the recent global crisis. We first draw an overall picture of migrant stocks and flows in Europe before and during the recession based on the Eurostat databases. We find that with the exception of Ireland, other Western economies hit by the crisis were not abandoned en masse as the popular press suggested. In the second step on the basis of cross-sectional Eurobarometer data we examine propensity to migrate to search for work within the EU in 2006, 2009 and 2011. We use multilevel modelling in order to examine the impact of individual resources, and also institutional and economic country effects on migration intentions. Reference Mundell, R. (1961) ‘A theory of optimum currency areas’, American Economic Review, 51, 509-17.