With more than 10,000 demonstrations each year, including 1,000 in Paris alone, social protest continues to play a fundamental role in French political life. Since the mid-1980s, some have been organised by ‘new social movements’ (Waters, 1998, p 183), involving anti-racist movements, solidarity movements, AIDS advocatory movements and so on. This chapter will analyse a short period of social evolution in France: the protest actions by the unemployed in 1997-98, the immediate reaction of the French government, which distributed one billion French francs (FF) to claimants through a social relief fund called the Fonds d’urgence sociale (FUS), and its consequences for the social welfare system. It is difficult to analyse this short episode and avoid two stumbling blocks on which understanding comes to grief. One mistake would be to underestimate the exact social role of the opinion voiced because the movement appears to be more or less hidden or confined to the outer limits of society and because it seems to exert little influence. The FUS was a temporary scheme that had no significant impact on the basic social protection systems in France. However, this interpretation neglects the close reciprocal interrelationship between the existence of the protests and the social protection system that inspired them. Another error is to overestimate the action of the movements by the unemployed: tough militant demonstrations tend to be violent and the media exaggerates the situation at a point in time that does not represent long-term reality.

This chapter will analyse the relation between the movement by the unemployed and the French social protection system, since this episode of the FUS reveals its many weaknesses. The first section explains the reasons for potential conflict between the French social welfare system and the unemployed. It highlights the confused relationship between solidarity and social citizenship. The second section describes the history of the movements by the unemployed in France, their demonstrations, their links with other new social movements, and the dissatisfaction that fuelled their specific claims partly as a result of the Juppé plan and the strikes in 1995. The third section analyses the social policy responses and government decisions concerning the demonstrations in 1998, especially the creation and the management of the FUS, which confirms a shift towards a residualised model of citizenship. We will conclude by offering general lessons on the long-term changes and consequences of these protests.