Social investment as a response to New Social Risks

Abstract

Nowadays, welfare states have to redesigntheir structures to respond to the New Social Risks derived from post-industrial society.The social investment strategy proposes an alternative with a forward-looking perspective within the framework of neoliberal globalization,since it proposes preventive resources to “prepare” citizens during the course of their lifetime, and avoid “repairing” them in vulnerablesituations. This text describes certain features of postindustrial society and the diversificationof risk that it implies and examines the theoretical approaches of the strategy called “social investment”.