'Citizenship' presents itself as a flexible scheme, capable of addressing the problem of the relationship between the subject and the political community in very different historical contexts. It can be applied to pre-modern societies (to the Greek polis as well as to the medieval civitas), it can be referred to the process of constituting modern statehood, and it can finally help to focus on today's crisis of the state form, which currently seems threatened by the formation of new supra-state structures (UE), no less than by widespread 'federalist' demands.

Questioning citizenship in this perspective means asking how the prerogatives, burdens, obligations, rights, and duties of a subject have been defined in different historical contexts. Not an abstract, imaginary subject, but a subject rooted in a specific political-legal order.

The educational material handed out in class

The module aims to introduce and discuss the main theories of citizenship developed in philosophical-legal thought and related models of citizenship as a set of rights, responsibilities and practices. First, the module will cover the main theories developed in the European tradition and discuss their potential and challenges in relation to rights in the contemporary world. It will then explore some often neglected approaches to citizenship, such as postcolonial and feminist ones. Finally, it will conclude with some references to the current debate on the new frontiers of citizenship, namely digital citizenship and post-humanism.
After an introduction to republican, liberal and communitarian models of citizenship, the following topics will be addressed: 1) Universalist and differential theories: Multicultural citizenship; 2) From cosmopolitanism to globalism; 3) Material and symbolic borders and critical migration theory; 4) Post/neocolonial epistemologies; 5) Feminist and intersectional perspectives on citizenship; 6) Offline and digital citizenship; 7) Posthumanism: Citizenship in the Anthropocene

Slide e materiali distribuiti a lezione e disponibili in Moodle