Italy: A territorial and Generational Divide in Social Citizenship

This chapter focuses on the case of Italy in order to verify whether and to what extent recent social policy reforms reflect a post-Marshallian conception of citizenship that—as Johansson and Hvinden suggest—seems to be emerging across Europe. However, if Italy never followed the path that Marshall identifi ed for the development of citizenship in the f rst place, the question appears rather more complicated. As I shall seek to illustrate, in the case of Italy the “original model of citizenship” is profoundly diff erent from the British one, and these origins can hardly be ignored if we are to fully grasp all the subsequent steps in the development and combination of civil, political, and social rights.