This article documents the ways in which a concept which had characterised the high neo-liberal period of the World Bank - social investment - and which plays on the discourse of capitalism, was reworked in the mid-1990s to become, among other things, a set of policies and programmes focused on fighting poverty and improving income security in Europe and Latin America. It documents in particular the adjustments on three dimensions of the citizenship regimes in these two regions. This comparison is based on the observation that, while often having quite different political histories, the Americas and Europe nonetheless share some important similarities in social citizenship practices. Currently, some countries in Latin America have on-going experiments with social citizenship that are not that different several European countries’ choices about how to design a citizenship regime for after neoliberalism. only subscribers can see the full article

Different processes and facts seem to indicate the emergency of new social agendas in Latin America, and more generally, new strategies of economic and social development. The trend can be identified in the growing criticism about the so-called Neoliberal paradigm, that ruled the region for the last quarter century; but also, recently, in the electoral victories of political leaders of left and centre-left, supposedly committed to different and socially more progressive alternatives of economic growth and international insertion; and, finally, in the reforms of social security and education that started in Chile in 2006. A central question is whether the model of growth that oriented the region in the recent past may be reaching its limit. only subscribers can see the full article