Nosotros somos, vosotros sois: las representaciones sociales del ciudadano y del immigrante

The notion of citizenship is actually challenged
in European societies, due to the
great changes involving social, political
and economical domains. Within the
theoretical framework of Social Representations,
and following the concept of
thêmata, a study involving Italian citizens
(N= 282) was conducted in order to assess
the meaning both of being a citizen
and an immigrant. Participants completed
two free association tasks with the stimuli
good citizen and immigrant coupled with
a standardised questionnaire. The shared
meanings associated with the notions of
citizen and immigrant were identified, as
well as the organising principles of both
representations. Results showed that both
representations were related to the thêma
of the subjectiveness–alterity antinomy,
and different patterns of psychosocial
variables were associated to the specific
evoked images