ABSTRACT
Social and ethnic segregation and the search for exclusive, fulfilling, homogeneous spaces have created barriers that threaten social cohesion. In the context of the classical social question and the Welfare State, they saw the establishment of a social citizenship built upon social rights which provided equal dignity for all through the satisfaction of basic needs and the reduction of inequality between classes. With current social cohesion policies the stake has shifted. By contrast, the new Welfare State, the Social Investment State, will have as its objective social cohesion understood as voluntary cooperation, the joining together of people so as to produce and outdo rival societies. Much more than its suppression or reduction, this is a true reversal of the philosophy governing the Social State. This is precisely the view of those who interpret current policies carrying the social cohesion tag as a disguised relinquishment of earlier breakthroughs, as the underhanded substitution of the civil society for the State.
