El movimiento estudiantil catalán en el nuevo ciclo de luchas

Abstract

Objectives: to establish the evolution of the Catalan student movement in the last 20 years (1993-2013) in order to understand the implementation contexts of neoliberal models of university management and mobilization cycles that respond to the various stages of the movement.

Methodology:  it is based on the hermeneutics of social processes, through the analysis of documentation issued by the Catalan student movement and a reflexion exercise of the authors on data collected from participant observation and activist research at various stages of the student movement in Catalonia.

Results: four distinct stages of the Catalan student movement are shown. Each one corresponds to changes in the political opportunity structure of the movement due to responses in legislative reforms of neoliberal orientation or to the emergence of mobilization cycles against capitalist globalization.

Conclusions: the Catalan student movement has received feedback from the anticapitalist demonstrations cycle, getting involved into a dynamics of growing alliances with various educational sectors (workers and teachers) and other social movements. However, the movement is often repetitive and reactive, although in some phases it has responded to the challenges of internationalization and coordination with other resistance movements to neoliberalism in the rest of Europe.