Constitutional and Regional Understandings of Citizenship in Italy: Between Inclusion and Exclusion

Abstract

In recent years the issue of citizenship has been the focus of renewed interest by social scientists so much so that citizenship studies have become institutionalized as a field of research. The reasons for this rediscovery lie also in the binary, if not ‘antinomic’, connotations of the term citizenship: ‘constitutional’ and state citizenship, substantive and formal citizenship, state and ‘regional’ citizenship. It is precisely its amphibious inclusion/ exclusion nature that makes the concept of citizenship a critical point in modern constitutionalism. While there is much reflection on the transformation that the concept of citizenship is undergoing, particularly in light of migration as a structural phenomenon, this contribution focuses on ‘the borders’ of citizenship to examine the universal aspect of the forms of coexistence as delineated in the Italian Constitution.