Part 1 of 5 · freeIntroduction
In 2025, France's social-security accounts ran a deficit of 21.6 billion euros. In the United States, the trustees of Social Security, the federal retirement system, project that its reserves will run out in 2034. For many, the figures prove it: the welfare state, that bundle of pensions, medical care and benefits paid for by taxes, is in crisis.
But a state does not only pay: it also decides who is entitled to what. In 2025, President Donald Trump ordered federal agencies to tighten eligibility checks on unauthorized immigrants, in the name of citizens' pensions and health care. Those immigrants are already barred from most federal benefits. When a government declares a crisis of the welfare state, whose benefits is it talking about?
The rest is in the Sophia app.The remaining parts, the open-book quiz and the full glossary. Free to start; Premium unlocks everything.
- 2The postwar bargain and its outsiders
- 3The Mazari case: a pension refused
- 4The braceros, an imported colonialism
- 5The "threshold of tolerance" and the Vitry bulldozer
Open-book quiz8 questions whose answers are in the text.
Glossary7 terms explained in a tap.
30 languagesThe same course, from French to Japanese.
