Against the backdrop of increased intra-EU mobility, this paper investigates the extent to which citizens are expected to realise a form of citizenship at the national- and EU-levels. In particular, it probes the idea that facilitating intra-EU mobility is at the cost of national sovereignty and citizenship, and explores citizens’ perceptions of intra-EU mobility. Using original focus group evidence of young, highly-educated and mobile citizens in the UK and Sweden, the paper pays particular attention to how this select group of citizens make sense of the different rules and technologies applied to the crossing of borders within the EU, and across the boundaries of the Schengen area. The paper then underlines the apparently limited influence of these issues and identifies various factors, which explain their limitation, including the fluid notion of territorial borders.
