  Gauge symmetries indicate redundancies in the description of the relevant
degrees of freedom of a given field theory and restrict the nature of
observable quantities. One of the problems faced by emergent theories of
relativistic fields is to understand how gauge symmetries can show up in
systems that contain no trace of these symmetries at a more fundamental level.
In this paper we start a systematic study aimed to establish a satisfactory
mathematical and physical picture of this issue, dealing first with abelian
field theories. We discuss how the trivialization, due to the decoupling and
lack of excitation of some degrees of freedom, of the Noether currents
associated with physical symmetries leads to emergent gauge symmetries in
specific situations. An example of a relativistic field theory of a vector
field is worked out in detail in order to make explicit how this mechanism
works and to clarify the physics behind it. The interplay of these ideas with
well-known results of importance to the emergent gravity program, such as the
Weinberg-Witten theorem, are discussed.
