The title of the Chairin the Social State and Globalization : legal analysis of solidarities - is a bit long, as it designates both an object and a method. Asits subject cannot be confined within the secure and recognized boundaries of a " branch " of law, in order to understand it, we need to consider the latter as a tool for analyzing societies, and not just as an established system of rules. This analysis must adopt a broad enough focus to situate the social state in the history and geography of human solidarity, and consider both its powerful impact on social ties and its destabilization by the process of globalization.

The term " globalization ", however, fosters confusion between two different types of phenomena. On the one hand, there are structural phenomena, such as the abolition of physical distances in the circulation of signs between people, or their shared exposure to the health or ecological risks engendered by technical development. On the other hand, the free circulation of capital and goods is a conjunctural phenomenon, the result of reversible political choices that lead to the over-exploitation of non-renewable physical resources.

That'swhy we need to oppose this critical notion of globalization with the concept of mondialisation. In both the etymological sense (where monde isopposed to immonde) and the legal sense (where mundus symbolized the unity of the city in Roman law), mundialization consists in making a place humanly liveable and habitable. Today, this means adapting the legal forms of work organization inherited from the industrial world to the risks and opportunities of the digital revolution ; and devising an international legal order that prohibits the use of open trade borders to evade duties of solidarity in the face of social and ecological risks.