"Change is to the Right": Youth Participation and New Right-Wing Formations in the 2018-2021 Cycle

Abstract

This work recovers the results of a lengthier socio-historical research oriented to analyse and understand the cycles of youth participation in right-wing spaces since the return to democratic life in Argentina. This chapter reconstructs the ways in which young people are approached and activist adherences are mobilised in the 2018–2021 cycle. The cycle is opened with the parliamentary debates on the Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy Bill (2018, 2020) and the revitalisation of liberal, libertarian and conservative youth organisations and partisan political spaces during the measures of Social, Preventive and Compulsory Isolation and Distancing in Argentina (2020–2021). The work analyses the prospects of an activism that exalts both the condition of being “young” and the political identification in the spectrum of right-wing politics. To do this, we will study the causes supported by activists, the ways in which they politically socialise in the streets and the dynamics that lead them to legitimise partisan political spaces as scenarios of a “struggle” encompassing both the political-institutional dimension and the so-called “cultural battle” (Laje, 2022).