2019 is being declared the Year of the Street Protester - with ongoing massive social unrest on every continent, in countries as diverse as Algeria, Bolivia, Britain, Chile, Ecuador, France, Haiti, Hong Kong, Iraq, Kazakhstan and Lebanon, amongst others. Youth is playing a major role in the street protests, and students have frequently been key role players. What is the role of students in these protests? How do protest causes relate to the typical grievances that students have been taking up in the decade since the the Great Recession? And what are the variables involved in understanding the 2019 wave of social movement activism and 21st century activism more specifically?
In a compact article compiled by Phil Altbach and me, we engage these questions and ultimately ask the question whether the post-2008 decade and 2019 in particular will go down in the history as a replay of the 60s student revolution and '68 in particular.
The article has been published on University World News and can be read / downloaded either from
UWN or my
Academia.edu account. The Spanish version of the article published on the Mexican website Nexos is available
here.
