Student Movements: Latin America

Broadly, student movements can be conceptualized both as formal, representative, and institutionalized organizations or as informal organizations whose members work toward achieving a common cause. Such student-led movements have a rich history in Latin America. This entry provides an overview of Latin American student movements whose aim is to produce a social change and defy neoliberal structural conditions by exploring the 2011 Chilean student movement, whose roots can be traced to the Córdoba movement initiated in Argentina in 1918. The entry then discusses the role of student movements in shaping relationships between the university, the state, and the broader society.