Le nuove sfide della cittadinanza in un mondo di immigrazione

Despite its crucial role in building socio-political arrangements in European societies, citizenship is nowadays criticized as a source of privileges opposing nationals to non-nationals. This article deals with some limits of current critiques of citizenship from the vantage point of migrations. Two main points are argued. First, critiques mainly treat citizenship under one dimension, the formal link to a national state; it is claimed here that restoring a multidimensional citizenship is crucial in order to recover the political strength of substantive social citizenship for purposes of social integration. Secondly, cross-analysis of citizenship and migration policies highlights some crucial tensions between the two sets of policies that current critiques tend to overlook. Migration policy still is a prerogative of national states and tend to submit citizenship policies to its own objectives; policies of naturalization prove to be insufficient to integrate migrations, while national citizenship seems to be less urgent in migrants' demands than other statuses (residence, permit of stay). It is proposed here that re-evaluating social citizenship may help to restore citizenship's own objectives and to recover crucial means for migrants' integration in the societies where they live, and where it is crucial that they feel as citizens.