From Student Protests to Citizen Assemblies: The Chilean Student Movement (2006-2011) as a Socio-political Resource for the Social Outbreak in Chile (2019)

Considering its extent and intensity, the Chilean social outbreak of 2019 is the most relevant socio-political event for Chilean democracy since the end of the dictatorship. This movement sought the transformation of the modernisation model -implemented in the country over the last 40 years-, challenging the already weakened socio-political tissue of political imagination. This study explores the role of the biographical consequences of the Chilean student movement (2006-2011) in the organization of the 2019 social outbreak. Using a longitudinal and qualitative approach, this study analyses the life stories of participants in the Chilean student movement, and compares them to their own experiences during the 2019 social outbreak. The results suggest that the processes of political socialisation experienced during the student movement provided participants with socio-political resources at a micro-political level, defining their forms of organisation and protest, as well as their experience of social unrest. These resources were employed to confront the crisis of political imagination, arising at an institutional level. To conclude, this study acknowledges some limitations and suggests further research, especially in relation to analysing late neoliberal moder-nisation and socio-political outbreaks from a regional perspective.