Rights, Recognition and Suspended Citizenship.
When observing reality, we are often tempted to read it in linear terms. A cause. An effect. A problem. A solution.
Some phenomena, however, cannot be understood from a single perspective without losing part of their complexity. Citizenship is one of them. Not only because it defines the relationship between the individual and the state, but because it makes visible the distance between the formal recognition of a right and the practical possibility of exercising it. The very same law, public service or administrative procedure can produce profoundly different outcomes.
It is precisely this gap that the concept of suspended citizenship* allows us to observe, inviting us to question the conditions that produce it.
The effectiveness of a right is built through a process shaped by access, recognition, protection, participation and belonging. When one of these steps breaks down, it is not merely a procedure that comes to a halt: the way a person is able to relate to that right is fundamentally altered.
It is within this space that a democracy reveals its relationship with recognition. Adopting this perspective means, first and foremost, changing the question.
Not simply which rights a society recognises. But under which conditions it enables those rights to be exercised.
From Rules to Relationships
Observing these conditions means shifting our attention from rules to relationships. It means questioning the quality of the relationships that make citizenship effective, as well as the variables of exposure that shape the way the same democratic friction is experienced by different people.
Ultimately, it is through these relationships that the foundations of mutual recognition are built.
Hanya Yanagihara writes: “Justice is for happy people, for those fortunate enough to have lived lives shaped more by certainty than by doubt**.”
Yanagihara reflects on justice from an ethical and existential perspective. Yet it is difficult not to hear, in these words, an echo of the uncertainty experienced by those who do not know whether a formally recognised right will ever become one they can actually exercise.
Recognition as a Shared Responsibility
Acknowledging that obstacles exist does not make them disappear. It does, however, remove them from the realm of individual responsibility alone and restore them to one of shared responsibility.
It is from this perspective that Article 3, paragraph 2, of the Italian Constitution remains remarkably relevant today. It is not enough to proclaim equality. The obstacles that, in practice, limit freedom and equality must also be removed.
Perhaps it is precisely in those words—“in practice”—so strongly advocated by Teresa Mattei during the work of the Constituent Assembly, that the enduring strength of this constitutional provision continues to resonate.
Not as a matter of wording, but as an expression of shared responsibility.
A Perspective in Practice
Interpretative frameworks exist to help us formulate better questions.
Those questions acquire meaning only when they encounter reality. It is from that encounter that Costanza Montanari’s contribution begins, exploring three areas in which democratic frictions become particularly visible: gender-based violence, the right to voluntary termination of pregnancy, and the rights of people in detention.
Note
* – Suspended Citizenships
The concept of suspended citizenships draws on Democrazie imperfette e cittadinanze sospese (Imperfect Democracies and Suspended Citizenships), the report published in 2026 by SEMIA – Fondo delle Donne. The report explores the distance between the formal recognition of rights and their effective exercise, highlighting the democratic frictions that shape contemporary democracies and questioning the conditions that make citizenship meaningful and exercisable.
SEMIA – Fondo delle Donne, Democrazie imperfette e cittadinanze sospese, 2026. Available at: https://semiafund.org/report-2026/
** – Hanya Yanagihara
“Justice is for happy people, for those fortunate enough to have lived lives defined more by certainty than by doubt.”
Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life, translated by Luca Briasco, Sellerio Editore, Palermo, 2016 (Italian edition), p. 256.