Varieties of Student Protests in Chile

This chapter describes the variety of student protests in Chile. It challenges two implicit assumptions about the student movement (conceptualized as a by-product of the expansion of the educational arena): that student contention is mostly about massive marches in capital cities; and that the student movement is a homogenous actor. Instead, the chapter shows that students resort to tactics—including disruptive ones—and that almost half of the student protests have an estimated size of 100 participants or less (protests with several thousands of people are uncommon). Also, the extraordinary 2011–2012 peak has been followed by an enduring valley of lower mobilization, with another minor peak during the 2019 uprising. Finally, student demands range from criticisms towards a market model of education (a claim potentially generalizable to other social goods) to more specific issues like problems with teachers and managers.