“Eppur si muove ,” or How Can Citizenship Processes Be Empirically Grasped

This article aims at discussing the conditions of possibility for empirically grounded approaches of citizenship processes, by relying on the already very rich social sciences literature on the issue. This literature relies on a conception of citizenship that stresses its essentially fluid and contextual dimensions, and does not limit it to the electoral sphere. Grasping such citizenships in acts thus requires to take a logical “side step” and to include in the analysis all the complex interminglings of social and political processes.