Deliberative talk, critical communities and the making of the 2018 Chilean feminist student movement

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the long-term causes behind massive feminist student protests in Chile in 2018. Based on in-depth interviews with key protagonists, it argues that the 2018 cycle owed a great deal to small feminist communities emerging during the prior decade within various student networks. Animated by sustained deliberation about the shortcomings of student sexual politics and a surge of feminism in Chile and abroad, these groups brought feminist ideas into the student movement, contributing to the development of identities, frames, organizations and repertoires that facilitated the take-off of protest in 2018. More generally, the paper suggests that attention to deliberative talk and critical communities illuminates how processes of social movement spillover, cognitive liberation and resource-building transform existing social movements, igniting protests around new demands.