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

Abstract

This article aims at explaining the emergence and magnitude of student protests in Chile in 2011 and in Quebec in 2012. These two societies witnessed unprecedented levels of student mobilization that cannot be accounted for simply by pointing out existing resources and political cultures. Although the latter did play a role in shaping the mobilization – insofar as in both Chile and Quebec the student movement is well organized, is composed of dense networks of formal as well as informal organizations and has been characterized by contentious practices for a long time – they cannot alone explain the timing and the duration of the 2011–2012 protests. The authors thus propose to treat organizational resources and political culture as initial conditions and draw on the work of McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly to focus on three processes that were critical in determining the growth and trajectory of the conflict: (1) mediation, as a result of communication and coalition work among student organizations and the emergence of new collectives that redefined past lines of division; (2) polarization, as a result of both a closed structure of political opportunities and a radicalization of student demands; and (3) spillover, as student movements extended beyond initial issues and goals and fostered other mobilizations. These three processes did not evolve in sequence but instead in parallel, conditioning one another. By showing that similar mechanisms can generate relatively similar effects in different contexts, this study contributes to assessing their robustness. Furthermore, by comparing a case from the Global North with one from the Global South the study contributes to making social movement studies less parochial.

Students as political actors? Similarities and differences across six European nations

“…Moreover, despite longstanding criticism of young people for being politically apathetic (Marsh et al, 2007;Pilkington and Pollack, 2015), students have often been at the forefront of various protests around the globe, taking a prominent stance on a variety of issues, not only those related to education (e.g. Macfarlane, 2017;Ancelovici and Guzm an-Concha, 2019;Guzm an-Concha, 2019). Research has also suggested, however, that the impact of higher education on political engagement is not always positive, with campus networks sometimes having the effect of closing down political engagement (Hensby, 2014;Brooks et al, 2015b) and promoting individual competition rather than collective action (Giroux, 2011).…”

Youth Strike for Climate: Resistance of School Administrations, Conflicts Among Students, and Legitimacy of Autonomous Civil Disobedience—The Case of Québec

“…While it is always risky to make predictions, we can assume that this cohort of strongly mobilized high school students will, in a few years, join the post-secondary student movement and reenergize it. Indeed, the Québec post-secondary student movement is known to be one of the most dynamic and contentious in North America, which partially explains the lower tuition fees in this province (Ancelovici and Guzmán-Concha, 2019). Yet, the movement has been more or less in abeyance due to the relative failure of "national" strikes for free education and against hydrocarbon in 2015 and for paid traineeships in 2019.…”

“…In 2015, a study on "democracy and protest in high school" in Québec was initiated-well before Greta Thunberg was heard of-by designing a mixed research method. In Québec, there have been studies of youth political involvement examining specific cohorts; for example, the post-secondary student movement (including Surprenant and Bigaouette, 2013;Ancelovici and Dupuis-Déri, 2014;Theurillat-Cloutier, 2017;Ancelovici and Guzmán-Concha, 2019), or "youth" between 15 and 30 (Gauthier, 2003) or 18 and 30 (Gallant, 2018), or women between 18 and 30 years (Quéniart and Jacques, 2004).…”

Power, Legitimacy, and Institutions in the October 2019 Uprising in Chile

“…The student protests of 2006 and 2011 led groups of activists to join political parties, establish social movement organizations, or create their own platforms. This activism had clear spillover effects (Ancelovici and Guzmán-Concha, 2019), including a growing influence of the feminist movement in public debates and the consolidation of new parties of the left and the formation of the Broad Front coalition in 2017. Michelle Bachelet's leadership in 2013 emerged as a response to social protests, especially the student movement.…”