Sentenced to Debt: Explaining Student Mobilization in Chile

Abstract

In 2011, Chilean students mobilized in the largest demonstrations since the country's return to democracy. Students in some other Latin American countries have also carried out mass demonstrations in recent years. What explains students' participation in mobilizations in Latin America? This article argues that financial grievances generated by neoliberal education policies and the massification of higher education are major causes of student protest participation. In addition, it shows how weak organizational linkages with ruling political parties increase the likelihood of mobilization. The theory is explored through a case study of higher education policy, student-party linkages, and student mobilization in Chile from 1990 to 2011. A statistical analysis of a survey of Chilean students demonstrates that a working-class background, using debt to finance education, and weak programmatic connections to parties in power are associated with higher levels of protest participation. En el año 2011, los estudiantes chilenos se movilizaron en las protestas más grandes del país desde el retorno a la democracia. Los estudiantes en otros países latinoamericanos también han realizado movilizaciones masivas en los últimos años ¿Qué explica la participación de los estudiantes en protestas en América Latina? Este artículo sostiene que los malestares financieros generados por políticas educativas neoliberales y la masificación de la educación superior son causas importantes de la participación estudiantil en protestas. Asimismo, el artículo demuestra cómo las conexiones débiles con los partidos políticos oficialistas aumentan la probabilidad de movilización. La teoría es explorada a través de un estudio de caso de políticas de educación superior, conexiones entre estudiantes y partidos, y movilización estudiantil en Chile entre 1990 y 2011. Un análisis estadístico de una encuesta de estudiantes chilenos demuestra que un origen de clase trabajadora, el uso de créditos para financiar la educación, y las conexiones programáticas débiles con los partidos en el poder están asociados con mayores niveles de participación en protestas.

The Nearness of Youth: Spatial and Temporal Effects of Protests on Political Attitudes in Chile

“…To analyze the effect of mobilization on political attitudes in Chile, this work combines protest event analysis and survey data. More specifically, the analysis relies on a dataset of protests with college student participants in Latin America (Disi 2017), and the 2008, 2010, and 2012 Chile waves of the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP 2015). 6 The dataset, which recorded more than 4,700 protest events in Latin America between 2000 and 2012 (of which 461 occurred in Chile), provides information about the location of each event.…”

“…The size of the effect, however, depends on the type of attitude: the effect tends to be larger on the more sensitive, weak attitudes and to be smaller on the more stable, strong attitudes. To test this claim, this article combines data from the 2008, 2010, and 2012 LAPOP Chile surveys and a dataset of student protest events in Latin America (Disi 2017) using Geographic Information Systems (GIS). The combined data create several measures of the number of student protest events close to each respondent, geographically as well as temporally.…”

Presidential Instability in Latin America: Why Institutionalized Parties Matter

“…Parties develop different types of linkage with civil society (Kitschelt and Wilkinson 2007), some of which are of great importance for government stability. For instance, ruling parties’ linkage with student organizations (Disi Pavlic 2018: 451) and labour unions (Corrales 2002: 34) have been found to reduce the likelihood of street demonstrations against the government. Furthermore, after long periods of time, parties tend also to be ‘reified’ in the electorate's mind – insofar as people come to regard them as an integral part of the established political system (Janda 1980; Randall and Svåsand 2002) – as well as having developed ‘stable roots in society’ (Casal Bértoa 2017).…”

Struggling for education: The dynamics of student protests in Chile and Quebec

“… Source : Disi Pavlic (2018), based on data from the Chronologies of Social Conflict of the Latin American Social Observatory, CLACSO. Includes rallies, occupations, blockades, etc.…”