Contesting la concertacion: Working-class demobilization and the production of oppositional political subjectivities in Chile's ‘democracia del libre mercado'

Drawing from interviews with thirty-nine residents of low-income, peripheral neighborhoods in Santiago, Chile, my research examines the formation of working-class political subjectivities in a context of low union density and elite-dominated political parties. I examine the class coalition of urban poor, working-class and liberal professionals formed by La Concertacion in the late 1980s, and account for the gradual breakdown of support from the urban poor and working-class. Using a Gramscian framework, I argue that La Concertacion built its hegemonic project on a return to formal democracy and social welfare, with a legitimizing ideology of equality of opportunity. However, the daily experience of working-class life in the market society has led to a widespread recognition that social mobility is difficult to come by, and so the ideology of the market, rather than being absorbed wholesale by working-class people, has found limited popular success. Experiences of the market have led to a broader critique of the incompatibility of neoliberalism and democracy. However, despite the pervasiveness of a critical discourse on neoliberal democracy among the urban poor and working-class, the lack of institutional channels for meaningful political participation and mobilization of these groups has led to disillusionment and cynicism. One response to this situation has been recourse to individualized market strategies. In particular, large numbers of poor and working-class families have responded by making significant sacrifices to help their children acquire post-secondary education. I analyze this strategy as essentially a labor struggle deferred to the education sphere. Finally, I argue that the current crisis of representation and perceived lack of state and party legitimacy among poor and working-class class Chileans is an instance of a Gramscian organic crisis, exemplified by the mass mobilizations of the Chilean student movement in 2006 and 2011.