Más allá del malestar. Una hipótesis sociológica sobre el significado político del movimiento estudiantil chileno

The irruption of Chilean student movement required to be addressed in sociological terms. So far, the predominant reading regarding the tensions and conflicts that student demonstrations have left to emerge is limited to describe how the economic logic of educational policies, driven by different Chilean Governments for these past thirty years, have caused growing unrest against the rampant liberalism of which the student movement would be its main social expression. We propose a theoretical hypothesis: the student movement breaks the social closure established by consensual democracy in Chile. Through this universal polemico the movement defies consensus policies and opens the possibility to alternate ways of conceiving democracy and political participation. The student movement links with diffuse social movements, originated in 2011, following the Arab spring, both in his criticism of inequality produced and reproduced by neoliberal policies, and organizational nature horizontal, flexible and participatory. For the first time questioning the education system undertaken by students puts in doubt the consensus by which the political system has obtained its legitimacy for more than thirty years. From a sociological contextualization, the article proposes a hypothesis that would allow the glocalization of the debate on the political significance of the movement; from local issues related to the consolidation of democracy and the desired economic development, towards new emerging issues where the fundamental thing is to elucidate political problems that now seem universal. We consider that this confluence between the concrete and the universal lies the main novelty of the movement. It’s a movement that, in principle, responds to the more traditional notion of the social movement, as an actor who directs his struggle toward goals clearly defined, combining claims of Trade Union character, such as free education, and of a political nature, as the condition of public or private University. However, some of their demands go beyond the mere yearning for a fairer society for all.

chilean student movement; crisis of political education in Chile; neoliberalism; political sociology; globalization