Youth Movements, Political Parties, and State Interactions: Comparative Insights from South Asia and Latin America

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Throughout history and across the world, student movements have fought for equal rights and access to educational institutions, better conditions, and engaged in the political struggles of budgets and the contested nature of curricula taught in schools and universities. Latin American scholars have proposed and questioned the idea that student movements are the main motors of political, social, and cultural change in society (Dip, 2023, p. 22). The year 2024 alone showed how in a revival of student activism in the U.S. and globally, students led a series of encampments in solidarity with Palestine and demanded that universities divest from corporations involved in war profiteering. Months after, Bangladeshi student protests again showed how an initial call for the end to government job quotas, expanded to a broader rallying cry for democracy and led to the ousting of prime minister Sheikh Hasina after decades of rule.
If the political and contested nature of education, and the role of students initiating struggles are well established – less is understood about student activists and their relationship to formal or partisan politics, including political parties and elections. It is not inevitable, nor the norm in many contexts, that student movements would engage in elections or partisan politics and doing so has not come without tensions. Yet critical examples across the world underscore the urgency of re-examining these relationships, and reopening questions of how student movements contribute to broader political and societal change (Choudry & Vally, 2020).
This panel focuses on this relationship across two regions with strong ties among student activists and political parties: South Asia and Latin America. Drawing from interdisciplinary approaches in sociology, education, and history, we take a comparative approach to examine student activist-political party relationships. We find distinct pathways and given highly different contexts of formal politics and educational institutions, yet some similarities.
In the context of Pakistan, student unions have been banned for over four decades under the pretext of violence and weaponization of student/youth wings affiliated with mainstream political parties. Scholars have highlighted how the state has historically employed this stance to curtail student influence and participation in formal politics, even while the weaponization of student groups is also state-sanctioned and a tactic to gain legitimacy and support of conservative religious political groups (Paracha, 2014). Despite the ban, student organizing has persisted, initially in the form of loose collectives, which have since taken on a more formal structure in recent years. Student activists collectively under the umbrella of Progressive Students Collective (PSC) have been demanding restoration of student unions since 2018, and allied with various social movements. Operating independently of political parties, student activists vehemently oppose the influence of the state, NGOs, and international development organizations. However, a nuanced dynamic exists within the movement, as it has developed relationships and alliances and is working to revive Left traditions in formal politics.
The first Latin America presentation offers a regional overview, followed by a focus on the Brazilian context. Latin American countries have had a long legacy of student movements since the 1900s (Ordorika, 2022). Student movements were an active force in ending the military dictatorship (Müller, 2016). In 1968, students led unprecedented protests in Brazil, Uruguay, Mexico, Bolivia, Argentina and Venezuela (Meyer, 2008; Gould, 2009; Manzano, 2014) as well as elsewhere in the world. Less is understood about contemporary student protests. We focus on street mobilizations, feminist protests, and Palestine solidarity encampments throughout the region, followed by a set of cases of Brazilian movements that transformed traditional student struggles into youth movements that were both more intersectional and that re-created relationships with partisan politics. Together, the papers discuss differences across two highly disparate contexts (South Asia, Latin America) -- and they raise questions about similar patterns and challenges of partisan engagements, particularly as they have taken on new trajectories in the 21st Century. The panel also address the CIES 2025 theme in terms of how student movements and their relationships with the state and political parties, engage digital platforms along with their street- and university-based actions.

Sub Unit

• 21st Century Educational Alternatives: Confronting Racial Capitalism, Patriarchy, Militarism, and the Climate Crisis

Chair

• Alice Taylor, University of Denver

Individual Presentations

• Pakistani student movements: resurgences, geographic variations, and political party relationships - Muhammad Salman Sikandar, UMass Amherst

• Intersectionality, Tensions, and Learning: Internal and External Struggles in the Contemporary Student Movement of Pakistan - Mariam Parvez Sheikh, Stanford University

• Transnational protests of student activism in Latin America and the Caribbean of the 21st century - Nicolas Alberto Dip, División de Historia, CIDE

• Brazilian youth movements and shifting partisan relationships - Alice Taylor, University of Denver

Discussant

• Salim Vally, University of Johannesburg