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.