Abstract

BAEZA CORREA, Jorge. Youth and social confidence in Chile. Ultima décad. [online]. 2011, vol.19, n.34, pp. 73-92. ISSN 0718-2236.  doi: 10.4067/S0718-22362011000100005.

The purpose of this article is an attempt to systematize and open from the accumulated knowledge of some reflections on Chilean youth and the social confidence. This article focuses on the subjects of generalized confidence and the confidence in institutions, two fundamental aspects of the democratic construction of a country, since they constitute significant data on social cohesion. The data on confidence shows that youth are non-different from the general tendency of the Chilean population. Youth, are not located in an extreme position of total distrust with strangers, but of a clear defensive conduct.  In addition, it is clear that a very low confidence in the tie institutions to political and judicial instances is stable through time, but one trusts the educational institutions. In this frame of distrust, a youth is appraised, that journeys from a systemic critic towards a validation of the beginning, which entails a social cohesion no longer constructed on the homogeneity, but on the base on which anybody is discriminated and where the individual effort does not discard the public support, but the opposite, it demands a compensation to the individual work.

Keywords : confidence; youth; social cohesion.