<p>This article introduces a theoretical approach to citizenship by seeing it through <i>status</i>. It challenges the binary frameworks that obscure the complexity of legal and political conditions within states by offering a framework that includes both nationals and foreigners in their conditions of access to rights, protections and safeguards. It argues that citizenship is not a uniform condition, but a spectrum of statuses shaped by formal and material conditions, which can include semi-integrated people in its practice. Building on Jellinek’s notion of status, the article proposes a new <i>Statustheorie</i> arguing for the existence of semi-included subjects whose status intersects the citizenship system and are fundamental to understanding the complexity of current citizenship regimes. By analysing sub-standard nationality regimes and systemic exclusions, the <i>Statustheorie</i> proposed reveals how citizenship operates as a hierarchical construct, structuring access to legal protections and political membership that work differently for people occupying different parts of the citizenship spectrum. This framework offers a structured approach to understanding the uneven distribution of citizenship across different polities and historical contexts, providing insights for scholars and policymakers working on migration, nationality law, and constitutional citizenship to understand the conditions of different subjects within citizenship systems.</p>