BackgroundCitizenship education is increasingly a priority for education at both the European and national levels. The new global order and the re- shaping of the notion of 'otherness', which in some respects seems to be a keyword in a postmodern world, open new paths and generate new challenges for education. Placing 'otherness' as a central issue of the contemporary world, reinterpreted and politically renewed as difference, confers new tasks on education and imposes the adoption of a new pedagogical paradigm.These tasks require us to rethink the notion of citizenship and to put it at the centre of new educational processes. But this reassesment should be done in an intercultural manner. We need a form of citizenship based on multiple and plural identities, which although is not well defined on the political and juridical level, can definitely be taught/learned by individuals and groups. Citizenship and plural identities have, until now, been conceived as a contradiction in terms. The challenge is to transform this contradiction into a pedagogical project, with the awareness that in a sort of 'intercultural citizenship' we encounter the challenge of mediating between the strict communitarian sense of belonging and an open- minded (theoretical and interpersonal) attitude toward other people and lands. However, this mediation needs a new concept of citizenship which can overcome the obsolete one based on the nation state.Framework The theoretical framework of the study is based on a phenomenological-hermeneutic approach to education. On this basis, the educational experience is seen as a process of developing the subject in the life-world, improving his/her skills to assign meaning to the world, expanding his/her human potentiality, empowering subjects, even in the awareness of bonds in which everyone is embedded.The thesis is that citizenship is not just a new label on an old bottle, but a new way to refound and give meaning to an active citizenship, by exploring that common area in which education and politics are constitutively interconnected.I will present three educational models that represent both an evolution and a breaking point for traditional models of citizenship education, as civic or moral education. Citizenship education, from this viewpoint, is not simply a restyling of civic education. We cannot lock it into a precise school subject. For each of the three models, I will examine some of the theoretical premises (philosophical and political), the educational implications and some critical points. These three educational models, which after examination are rejected for different reasons, are the following:1) The republican model, in which citizenship is strictly related to belonging to a common nation-state and a shared history; 2) The liberal model, where the idea of citizenship has a normative function rather than a historical status. It is aimed at giving people a set of individual rights and where education should enable people to exercise them with critical thinking;3) The moral model, which underlines the ethical dimension of moral education against liberal neutrality. In so doing, it can sometimes slide into indoctrination.What are the possible alternatives?We are able to use all these three model on the practical level as different teaching techniques; but the problem remains: what theoretical horizon allows us to draw them together? We need to think of education as a political act in itself. The educational experience should become a field of experimentation of politics of the subject. And citizenship education should become a specific form of a more general political education..