Social Enterprises in France, Portugal and Spain

Abstract

This chapter compares the emergence and development of social enterprise in France, Spain and Portugal, which is linked, to a large extent, to the social-economy tradition. These countries have also experienced the emergence of new initiatives, promoted by citizens willing to democratise society and contribute to its social transformation through solidarity practices that do not always adopt social-economy legal forms or traditions. Most of these initiatives are considered today as part of the solidarity economy. Finally, more recently, these countries have seen the emergence of socially innovative and more market-oriented enterprises, which are often described as social enterprises. The guiding hypothesis of this chapter is that the notion of social enterprise, as initially conceptualised within the EMES International Research Network (Defourny 2004), is scarcely used in the three countries because it does not correspond to a stabilised approach and takes different forms and meanings. Building upon the country reports, we analyse social enterprises as organisations that are located between three poles that coexist in France, Spain and Portugal: the social economy, the solidarity economy and social entrepreneurship.