During the last decades, the rapid changes of the global political and economic scenario that caused the crisis of the state have also thrown into crisis one of the most emblematic institutions of modernity: citizenship. As a consequence, citizenship is no longer the exclusive form of relationship between individuals and political power. When citizenship started to lose its monolithic compactness, its “fragments” started to move―so to speak―upwards and downwards. Moving upwards, they went to compose a new legal status―European citizenship; moving downwards, they connected to local contexts the entitlement of some fundamental rights and began to give shape to a system of local citizenships. Therefore, national citizenship has been joined by new forms of citizenship,1 making membership more complex and articulated and fragmenting the status of citizenship. While citizenship seems to lose its relevance, a new status, among the others, is gaining an increasing importance: residence. The status of national citizen is joined therefore by a new entity: the formal status of whoever is legally residing in the territory of a state. Although the condition of non-citizen resident is by previous to the far socalled “crises of the state”―the figure of denizen,3 indeed, was already present during the Middle Ages―the process of European integration and, at the same time, the process of regionalisation within single states confers to this condition a new centrality. The system of local citizenship which is gradually arising has some potentialities but, at the same time, involves some evident risks. If, on one hand, the systems of local rights could be considered as more inclusive towards migrants than the national ones, on the other hand they can turn into heavily exclusionary mechanisms. The so called “residence”, that is to say the inscription into the registry office of a town is, in specific terms, the bone of contention between who promotes forms of local citizenship which are at least potentially universalistic and who, on the contrary, defends increasingly particularistic forms of citizenship.
Between the right to the place and the rights in the place: the uncertain status of legal domicile between global urges and local resistances
Gargiulo Enrico
2013
Abstract
During the last decades, the rapid changes of the global political and economic scenario that caused the crisis of the state have also thrown into crisis one of the most emblematic institutions of modernity: citizenship. As a consequence, citizenship is no longer the exclusive form of relationship between individuals and political power. When citizenship started to lose its monolithic compactness, its “fragments” started to move―so to speak―upwards and downwards. Moving upwards, they went to compose a new legal status―European citizenship; moving downwards, they connected to local contexts the entitlement of some fundamental rights and began to give shape to a system of local citizenships. Therefore, national citizenship has been joined by new forms of citizenship,1 making membership more complex and articulated and fragmenting the status of citizenship. While citizenship seems to lose its relevance, a new status, among the others, is gaining an increasing importance: residence. The status of national citizen is joined therefore by a new entity: the formal status of whoever is legally residing in the territory of a state. Although the condition of non-citizen resident is by previous to the far socalled “crises of the state”―the figure of denizen,3 indeed, was already present during the Middle Ages―the process of European integration and, at the same time, the process of regionalisation within single states confers to this condition a new centrality. The system of local citizenship which is gradually arising has some potentialities but, at the same time, involves some evident risks. If, on one hand, the systems of local rights could be considered as more inclusive towards migrants than the national ones, on the other hand they can turn into heavily exclusionary mechanisms. The so called “residence”, that is to say the inscription into the registry office of a town is, in specific terms, the bone of contention between who promotes forms of local citizenship which are at least potentially universalistic and who, on the contrary, defends increasingly particularistic forms of citizenship.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
