Abstract
In his famous address at the Sorbonne in Paris, Albert Einstein laid ironically the stress on the very limits of the concept of “global citizenship”. Indeed, even though the process of globalisation of trade, science or more generally speaking “culture” have unquestionably aroused international and, above all, supra-national common stakes, the sentiment of belonging to a country and the concrete exercise of rights and liberties have remained fiercely linked with the concept of the nation-state, that is to say “territoriality”. The major problem is that, in the actual and cumulative process of globalisation –nevertheless still restrained to certain domains, above all economic-related –, the concept of citizenship itself has appeared changing and even versatile insofar as it has been equally used by antagonistic actors (defenders of Anglo-Saxon economic liberal theories and alter-globalisation defenders, pro-EU and sovereignists, liberal intellectuals and nationalists…) with different meanings and different purposes. So because citizenship has always been a concept liable to different definitions and interpretations, the context of the outstripping of the nation-state has led to a certain “speculation” that had created an immense gap between those who claim that being a Man is enough to be called a “citizen of the world” as a part of the “cosmos” (the rationally organised universe) and those, at the other extremity of the spectrum, who argue that cosmopolitanism is an empty utopia with the absence of global, supranational political institutions and common rights and duties.
