Question of status in the European Union. The space between immigration and citizenship.

Plurality in Unity is a simple but effective formula to summarise the current situation of individual status in Europe. Multiple and variable over time are the status possessed, or that could be acquired, by persons, although, in this composite panorama, it is still nationality that appears to be the most valuable, privileged and secure status: the one capable to reduce to unity all the others. However, if this remains true in general terms, the continuous appearance of new status and the transformation of the European Union itself into a rights provider, has challenged not only the hegemony of nationality, as the sole meaningful status for mobile persons, but, inevitably, has also shaped and modified its content and symbolic meaning in accordance with the evolved context. This thesis concentrates upon the relation between immigration and citizenship legislations at the supranational, national and sub-national level, since they are the basis and the determinants of individual status in relation to a certain territory. Firstly, it focuses on the relation between individual status in the EU legal order, i.e. on the status attributed by EU laws to third-country nationals labour migrants, and on the Union citizenship. In the second part, it investigates the range of status available to non-nationals within Belgium, paying particular attention to the sub-national level; Sweden, considering the influence of the Nordic cooperation; and, finally, Switzerland as regards, specifically, the role of sub-national units in citizenship acquisition procedures and influence on the government of immigration of the Swiss-EU relations as regards persons' freedom of movement. This thesis concludes affirming that an increasing level of interaction, reciprocal influence and convergence are observable in the government of immigration and citizenship acquisition. The latter is increasingly used as a tool to better govern the former, by relying on the everlasting distinction between the citizens and the others, and regardless of the level of government considered.