ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the field of analysis in order to try and delineates the entire array of programs composing the French welfare-to-work (WTW) equivalent. The core logic of French social assistance schemes stands in contrast to the liberal Anglo-Saxon understanding of “welfare.” The French social protection system was built under the hegemony of social insurance principles and has been mainly funded by social contributions based on payroll collected by a social security system legally and politically distinct from the state. The combination of social assistance minimum incomes and of employment programs leads more to the creation of a “secondary market” than to a WTW logic, which emphasizes a direct flow from assistance to employment. The United States model of citizenship and the notion of social debt and citizen obligations differ from the ideas of citizenship and social debt in France.
