Reflections on Social Intervention with Youth Movements

This paper presents a critical reflection on social intervention processes directed toward youth movements, drawing upon findings from a qualitative case study of the 2021 social uprising in Cali, Colombia. The study explores how institutional actors, community organizations, and young participants negotiated power relations through everyday practices of resistance and adaptation. Informed by Foucault’s conception of power as relational, De Certeau’s notions of tactics and strategies, and Scott’s theory of hidden transcripts, the analysis reveals that interventions are not neutral practices, but political processes embedded in the social fabric of everyday life. Results suggest that while social intervention can institutionalize grassroots resistance, it can also open dialogical spaces for subversion and redefinition of institutional norms. The discussion underscores the ambivalent role of intervention: simultaneously a mechanism of control and a potential field for emancipation.