The discursive formation of the affirmative action policy in Chile: Right to higher education, public education, and deficit

Global scholarly narratives have identified a strong influence of anti-racist, anti-discrimination, and gender equality movements and discourses on affirmative actions in higher education in different national contexts. While empirically valid for various cases, this portrait overlooks affirmative actions’ problematic entanglements with other conflictive rationalities and political projects. This article focused on the discursive formation of the affirmative action policy in Chile within a hegemonic context of meritocratic and neoliberal ideologies in higher education arrangements. It delves into a case that has been scarcely considered within the progressive narratives framing affirmative actions in higher education globally. Based on 61 policy documents and 16 interviews with key policy actors as part of a broader critical policy ethnography, we uncover three crucial contradictory and yet articulated discursive lines constituting this policy—higher education as a social right, recovery of public education, and deficit alongside key ideological policy technologies: situated meritocracy, improvement, and leveling. These discursive formations were associated with significant struggles and intertwinement with neoliberal higher education and reorientations at the State level. This work contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the discursive porosity and multiplicity of affirmative actions in higher education as they are assembled by social justice and exclusionary logics and participate in broader discursive struggles, ideologies, and contradictory state projects.