Scholarship debate maintains that through technology advances in data processing we can personalize law in order to produce efficiency in its application. This takes place by tailoring legal rules to individual behaviors and features and by adopting micro-directives aligned to each individual. Micro-directives ensure a good grade of law enforcement. But when personalization occurs in the context of citizenship, implications are different. I argue that citizenship should not be personalized for two reasons. Firstly, for the risk of altering the meaning of citizenship to such an extent that it does no longer imply any state commitment. Secondly, for the risk of depersonalizing citizenship by detaching the real individual from his/her persona, ie the character played in a social context. Indeed, through the processing of individual data and behaviors, what we reconstruct is the individual’s virtual mask.
We look forward to welcoming you on July 4-6, 2022 for our Annual Conference on Global Problems and Prospects in Public Law.
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