'We don't want to speak with technocrats because the solutions are political': the strategies of the Chilean student protests in 2006 and 2011

Abstract

This dissertation identifies and describes the strategies used by the Chilean student movement in its 2006 and 2011 protests. It analyses the development of the strategies and observes that a traditional repertoire of action was complemented by important democratising organisational changes that changed both the strategising and collective identity of the student movement. In addition to this, the collective action frame evolved make substantial links between material demands and structural features of neoliberalism. This latter strategy was articulated through political discourse, which directly contested the technocratic discourse of neoliberalism and contributed towards a wider process of re-politicisation of Chilean society that continues to be linked to the leaders and demands of the 2011 movement.