Birth of the European Individual: Law, Economy, Security (eBook)

This book examines the birth of the European individual as a juridical problem. Focusing on six legal case dossiers from the European Court of Justice - which, doctrinally, concern the legitimacy of states' derogation from the free-movement rights of workers - the book treats these as an electrifying laboratory for the study of law and society The concrete individuals whose cases the book analyses are a scientologist, a dangerous gunman, a provocative trade-unionist, a rogue pimp, a drug dealer, and two prostitutes. These delinquent individuals - each expelled from one of the Member States - thus provide the raw material for constructing the idea of the European individual. Foucault's story of the modern subject constitutes the book's main theoretical inspiration, as it considers the encounter between legal and other practices within a more general field of juridical power: a network of active relations, between different social spheres. The European individual, it is argued, emerged out of this field - and its practices of knowledge-power - at the intersection of regimes of law, economy and security.