Anatomia del cittadino. Tre modi di intendere la cittadinanza e alcuni problemi indesiderati

This essay aims to distinguish analytically the meanings of “citizenship” in the contemporary debate. According to the semantic area of reference, citizenship stands for a political status referring to the individual’s position within the polity; a legal status referring to the overall position of a subject characterized by a determinate sphere of capacities; a social status indicating the ascribed or achieved position of a person within the social stratification in the group. After distinguishing the three semantic areas and specifying the methodology used, focus switches to the structure, genesis and internal composition of the semantic areas. These are subsequently summed up in a scheme that accounts for the basic problem that a given semantic area attempts to respond to. The purpose is to explain, on the basis of practical examples, why the distinction is important and why there is so much confusion in the current debate. In the last section, I suggest another distinction, inspired by Aristotle’s third book of Politics according to which we should distinguish between what the citizen is and who a citizen is. The stake of the issue is to inquire on the plausibility of assuming that a person has to enjoy a determinate attribute or capacity in order to have the right or the legal obligation implied by the status of citizenship.