Immigrazione e diritto di cittadinanza. Il paradosso storico della vicenda europea

The evolution of migratory phenomena, its transformation into a stable and composite presence, and above all the emergence of a second generation, have obliged European countries to enrich the range of rights acknowledged to migrants and their descendents, without resolving in a definitive manner the historic paradox of the European experience: the attempt to keep together the economic logic on which the European model of entries regulation is based, with the solidarity logic that stress the primacy of personhood on the States’ prerogative to “choose” their citizens and the foreigners’ treatment. An attempt that, today like yesterday, produces compromising solutions which show, at the same time, the character of cultural and political artefact of national citizenship and the paradoxical outcomes resulting from the application of the logic of means tested in the rights’ access.