The Quebec student protest movement in the age of neoliberal terror

Abstract

Reflecting on the 2011–2012 youth-led resistance movements in North America, this essay contextualizes and evaluates the Quebec student movement against the increasing influence of neoliberalism on North American and global society as a whole, comparing its strategies and impacts with those of the Occupy movement in particular. The Quebec movement launched a series of protests that awakened society to the prospect of what struggling for a radical democracy might mean, and how crucial free, accessible higher education must be to such a struggle. The key challenge for these social movements will be to continue to develop and circulate their views in the public sphere through forms of political organization that are as coordinated as they are flexible and open to new ideas. Both the Occupy movement and the Quebec student resistance have ignited a new generation of young people who now face the ongoing challenge of developing a language and a politics that integrate a meaningful consideration of public values and imagine the possibilities of a democracy not wedded to the dictates of global capitalism. This emerging public culture should make pedagogy central to its understanding of politics and work diligently to provide alternative subjects, narratives and power relations that contribute to sustainable educational institutions and enlarged public spaces in which matters of knowledge, identity and social responsibility become central to creating a democratic formative culture – here understood as the very precondition for the modes of agency, public values and engaged citizenship required to support any just and inclusive society.