In this talk, we will discuss how, within formally republican states, biological descent has become a dominant legal and political reference, transforming citizenship into a new form of aristocracy. Adopting a conceptual-historical approach, it identifies four features of this process: the association of blood with civic virtue and loyalty; the preservation of citizenship’s rarity and symbolic value; the centrality of heredity; and the increasingly exceptional, demanding and discretionary acquisition of membership by outsiders.

Restrictions on jus soli and naturalisation in Europe and the U.S. illustrate these dynamics. The discussion will conceptualise aristocratisation as a dual process. Symbolically, birth-based membership revalues citizenship as a scarce, honourable status reproduced across generations. Politically, descent naturalises exclusion by presenting membership boundaries as consequences of origin rather than contestable choices, thereby reconciling exclusionary practices with republican commitments to equality and non-privilege.

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