Une définition institutionnelle du lien social : la question du domicile de secours

Abstract

The underlying principle of French public assistance is that of responsibility, towards the needy individual, of the community to which he belongs. The search for the rules governing, over two centuries, the definition of the individual's résidence uncovers the evolution of the institutional definition of the social bond. An individualist institution, founded in nature in the year II of the French Revolution, it took on a more utilitarian but also more family-linked character with the mandatory public assistance laws of the Third Republic, which modified its scope. In the 1930s, thé « departmentalization » of the residence strained the relation between the individual and his community, while social insurance laws tended to substitute occupational solidarity to the traditional territorial solidarity. The institution, however, survived the 1953 reform which transformed public assistance into social aid, and the recent decentralization laws perpetuate it.