Due to the effects of globalization that affect different aspects of modern societies, the concept of identity is currently subject to an attempt of a deep re-elaboration. The huge flows of migrants from the less developed parts of the globe to rich countries are increasing the multiculturalism of contemporary societies and are raising questions concerning not only legal and civil issues but also social and cultural matters (Ross, 2007).

In the light of the new global phenomena, an extensive debate have been developing about the inventory and the reciprocal relationship of multiple identities in the individuals, within the theoretical framework of the social identity theory  (Tajfel, 1978; Tajfel and Turner, 1979, 1986). The common theoretical basis of this debate is related to a specific concept of identity, which is not intended as a transcendent entity prior to social reality, but it is a modality of understanding of the self and of the different communities we live in. In this perspective, individuals do not possess a single identity, but an inventory of multiple identities, characterized by different degrees of tension between them. They are distinct but often do not have well-defined boundaries and rarely eliminate each other (Delanty & Rumford , 2005).

Multiple identities are contingent: the individual can use one or a combination of them, randomly and unpredictably, depending on the place, on the people and on the circumstances in which the communication takes place. Based on these assumptions, the identities are then built and not given a priori, they are liquid and multiple, and none of them can be considered as the only category of the individual (Hall, 1996; Bauman, 2001, 2004).

Within this debate, growing interest has been focused on the degrees of membership to different political and cultural communities (understood in terms of “state” and “nation”) from the local to the national and supranational level, including also the so called “world community”.

Some large-scale surveys such as IEA-ICCS (2009 ) or the Standard Eurobarometer 81, carried out for the European Commission in May 2014, have already addressed these issues, examining the degrees of individuals’ belonging to different communities. These research, however, do not provide an in depth analysis on the characteristics and behaviors that are deemed to be specific of the national and supranational identity – i.e. they do not deal with the question: what does it mean “to be Italian” or “to be European” for the respondents?

On the other hand, the research that have examined this matter in detail, have posed these questions to target groups made up of university students or adults (Bruter ,2004; Risse, 2004; Citrin e Sides, 2004; Lutz et al., 2006; Jamieson, 2007; Pichler, 2008).

The present contribution is part of my PhD dissertation and it is focused on two objectives:

1) assessing students’ multiple identities related to the different degrees of belonging to the local, regional, national, European and global community (in terms of a "single world society");

2) identifying the elements at the core of three types of identity: the Italian, the European and the world citizen identity, i.e. identifying those characteristics or behaviors that are considered peculiar of being Italian, European and a world citizen by the students.

 The target group of the present study is composed of Italian 8^th grade students (in consistency with the IEA-CIVED (1999) and ICCS (2009) international surveys, which represent the studies at the core of this work).

This contribution provides also a focus on the operationalization into variables of the constructs related to “being Italian”, “being European” and “being a world citizen”, highlighting the current debate on these matters.

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