THE CASE OF THE CHILEAN STUDENTS MOVEMENT

Abstract

In the last 10 years, social movements have faced stronger difficulties in Chile. Especially from 2011 on, the social movements have burst into the public space pushing new disputes over what is desirable and what is possible. At this point, new actors would seek to participate in the collective construction of the social order. 

Standing out among these new actors are the students, who have constructed a problematic image of the Chilean society and designated the present as the fitting time for its required transformation. Therefore, since 2006, the demands of the Chilean student movement have been gradually transformed into a counterhegemonic fight that is not just focused on the educational field and its mercantile features, but also adds tension to the neoliberal paradigm that overwhelms Chile nowadays.

This article suggests a critical reading of the Chilean student movement, analyzing it from the theoretical framework that Guy Bajoit proposed in order to understand the collective action. The article examines the three big processes of the collective action and its conditions: (1) the step from privatization to frustration, (2) the step from frustration to mobilization and (3) the step from mobilization to the organization; deployed in eighteen big conditions to look closely at the case of the movement and finally to identify its greatest strengths and weaknesses. The purpose of this research is to show that there is a clear collective identity, as well as an opponent and the definition of the common good. However, the movement is in some respects weaker as regards the mobilization and most especially, its organization.