Abstract

In order to describe the transformations that characterize citizenship today, the author proposes to cross the sociological concept (originally formulated by T.H. Marshall) with a legal perspective and a philosophic-political one. In the first perspective, the author reviews the rights attributed to non-citizens (immigrants) and the growing bonds deriving to the States from the partecipation in international organizations and the signing of international treatises. In the second perspective, the author meets the contemporary challenges to the notion of the "neutrality" of citizenship with an analytical differentiation of the sets of rights which constitute citizenship itself. The conclusion is a "general crisis of citizenship", only weakly contrasted, in Europe, by the current process of continental integration.