The study addresses, from a critical and hermeneutic approach, the relationship between work and citizenship in contemporary society, seeking to understand them mediate the interface of the changes involved by the movement of capital on a global scale. Explicit, therefore, contradictory links between work and citizenship in the Western world. Condition that allows, on the one hand, to comprehend the modern design as a way to emergence of democracy and human rights prefigured by the perspective of the Nation-State and on the other, as a way to Unlimited merchandise kingdom expansion, or even of capitalism (National). The contradictory nature of this relationship is exacerbated in contemporary society (including Brazil) from the weakening of the Nation-State of the place in the guarantee of human rights since the advent of neoliberal policies in the context of flexible accumulation phase of capital (transnational).