Poor citizens. Social citizenship versus individualization of welfare

The crisis of welfare questions social citizenship and social rights as the bases for redistributive policies and public services as we have known the m until up to now in most European countries. This undermines the organizat ion of solidarity centered on the idea of social risk; social policies are being restructured along new individualized strategies against the burden o f the social, considered untenable for our societies. This essay tries to e valuate such a turn, particularly in policies against poverty, from the van tage point of the French history of citizenship where poverty played a cruc ial role in the process of socializing risks. Today, the problem of poverty is conceived within the perspective of individualization and its key conce pt of social exclusion. Individualized social policies, however, do not see m able to fill the social fracture, while they might well reduce the scope of our citizenship rights.