Abstract

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, looking at citizenship from migrations. Two main points are argued. Critiques mainly treat citizenship under one dimension, the formal link to a nation 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. Cross analysis of citizenship and migration policies highlights some crucial tensions between the two that critiques tend to overlook: migration policy still is a prerogative of national states and tend to submit citizenship policies to its own objectives; national citizenship seems to be less urgent in migrants' demands than other statuses (residence, permit of stay), and policies of naturalization prove to be insufficient to integrate migrants. It is proposed here that re-evaluating social citizenship may help to restore citizenship's own objectives and to recover crucial means for migrants' social integration in host societies where they live, and where therefore it is crucial that they feel citizens.