Rethinking Citizenship in a Post-National Constellation

Classical citizenship was understood as a status attributed to all those who are full members of a national state. Around the inclusion in this status and its expansion with new rights many social movements have fought their struggles. However, internal inequalities that have survived in many countries led some authors to suggest the subsistence of a hierarchy of citizenship. In other contexts, the mobility of people has reinforced fears and xenophobia, and consequently the citizenship is becoming there increasingly the legal basis for demarcating boundaries of inclusion and exclusion. New discursive semantics, such as communitarianism and postcolonial studies, react claiming for singularities on community bases to define belongingness previously expressed by citizenship and nation. The text deals with the question how the notion of citizenship could be extended to maintain its relevance today.