‘What does it mean to be a European citizen?’ The first among four bullet points of the EU declaration on citizen rights reads, ‘the right to freely move around the EU and settle anywhere within its territory’ (European Commission, 2013, p 4). This grants EU citizens (hereafter Europeans) the right to stay and work in any member country and nullifies the purposes of working visas. Despite having these privileges, the young adults who are the focus of this book are not moving within the EU, but to, and often within, Asia. They regard their European citizen rights as a precious treasure, but their mobility tells a different story; wherein the crux lies a notion that an awareness of the freedom to leave makes it hard to stay. Sandra, an Irish-American woman whom I met in Singapore in 2015, and have stayed in contact with since, is a living example.

“Europe is my home and I don’t think that will change. Europe as a place to be – I am not sure”, she uttered after a brief silence. We were sitting in armchairs at the visitor’s lounge of her 28th floor office, gazing over Singapore’s cloudy skyline, removed from the hustle and bustle of the city that sprawled below us. At only 28, Sandra had already worked in four countries. With her grey business attire and thoughtful expression, the Irish-American looked older than her age. Is it the accumulation of different life experiences? Is the young woman next to me at home in this place? What brought her here? Questions filled my mind easily in that space. As if she could read my mind, Sandra explained why Singapore, as Europe and all other places she had temporarily lived so far, was not the place where she would settle. Rather, she felt an inner state of agitation that pushed her to move on and keep searching for something that she did not know what it was and which she had not yet found. Where, then, lies the future of people like Sandra? How did their migration stories begin?