This paper is not devoted to European citizenship, but rather to the ways we study it. The paper is based on a sample of recent literature on EU citizenship and is developed as follows. Firstly, seven divergent thematizations (the ways EU citizenship is identified and framed) are introduced and analyzed with regard to the problems they show. Then five conceptualizations are presented that come from the same sources, and that should be considered to overcome criticalities. There follows the introduction of a conceptual framework regarding democratic citizenship as an empirical phenomenon. This framework allows the identification of a paradigm that has shaped national citizenship and that is experiencing deep crisis and transformation. European citizenship, from this perspective, can be viewed as anomaly of the paradigm and then appropriately studied.