Nosotros somos, vosotros sois: las representaciones sociales del ciudadano y del immigrante

The notion of citizenship is actually challenged in European societies, due to the great changes involving social, political and economical domains. Within the theoretical framework of Social Representations, and following the concept of thêmata, a study involving Italian citizens (N= 282) was conducted in order to assess the meaning both of being a citizen and an immigrant. Participants completed two free association tasks with the stimuli good citizen and immigrant coupled with a standardised questionnaire. The shared meanings associated with the notions of citizen and immigrant were identified, as well as the organising principles of both representations. Results showed that both representations were related to the thêma of the subjectiveness–alterity antinomy, and different patterns of psychosocial variables were associated to the specific evoked images