Abstract

The article critically engages with international scholarship on citizenship studies and it argues in favour of an interdisciplinary and comparative approach, when it comes to discuss the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion associated with citizenship laws, policies and practices. It advocates that the Italian discussion on citizenship catches up with the international literature, where the cross-fertilization of Law with other disciplines has proved particularly useful. In the first section, the authors show how the disciplines of History, Reflexive sociology and Historical institutionalism, when profitably bridged with Law, provide essential lenses to a sound understanding of citizenship. They focus on the complex entanglements that link citizenship with the definition of the "demos", international relations, nation-building, state sovereignty, international migrations, social and economic marginalization, race, gender, and power relations. In the second part, they deal in depth with the notion of marginalization with respect to the Italian case. In conclusion, the article contends that an interdisciplinary discussion of citizenship, in the Italian case, might yield to a beneficial «devaluation» of the concept in the political debate, allowing for a more pragmatic, functionalist, informed approach, instead of the ethno-nationalistic, ideological, hyper technical one that is currently featured in Italy.