The political changes that have occurred at the level of the Executive Powers in key areas and countries of Latin America and the Caribbean have generated sufficient expectations to project present States and attempt to qualify the years of neoliberal policies that have – in some cases – marked our region until recently.

The social and humanitarian crisis generated by the coronavirus pandemic is noteworthy, as it prompted states to implement measures in the areas of health, infrastructure, hygiene, prevention, social isolation, restrictions on the movement of people, and the suspension of productive activities and non-essential services, among others. We have witnessed the necessity of the presence of nation-states as planners of population health and well-being. As has been said, the cruel lesson of the virus (De Sousa Santos, 2020) is less associated with its health consequences—which were and in some places continue to be tragic—but rather with what this phase of capitalism has produced in relation to the function of nation-states and their connection with civil society. Here, it is essential to highlight that, despite the years of popular governments in the region during the first decade of the 2000s, we have witnessed, since the 90s, the demonization of public services; The degradation of social policies dictated by austerity measures under the pretext of the state's financial crisis; the privatization of public services and the underfunding of the remaining ones because they are not in the interest of capital (De Souza Santos, 2020: 68). This dominance of capital over the state, of the public over the private, within the framework of a profoundly unequal world, exposed the difficulties faced by the states of the region in addressing the humanitarian crisis and the centrality of capital in the organization of life for the inhabitants of the world and of our region in particular.

Thus, in some Latin American countries (Argentina, Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Chile, and Honduras), neoliberal governments have been giving way to political sectors more closely linked to the State's presence in social rights—primarily health, education, and housing—both before and during the pandemic. This has generated expectations of a new wave of South-South regional integration. While certain still-small groups in the region seek to reinstate neoliberal perspectives within the context of a Europe at war, where these same groups have managed to establish statehood in places like Italy, Latin America and the Caribbean seem—once again—to be paving the way toward states that prioritize the well-being of their populations and the reduction of inequalities in their political agendas.

In this spirit, we propose the following Working Group, with the objective of generating knowledge to study and plan strategies that will allow us to support this new wave of states that prioritize the well-being of their populations. The social sciences and their agendas are the central focus of this Group, promoting their politicization and mobilization—that is, their connection to and impact on Latin American and Caribbean societies.

This brief reference to recent actions concerning the countries to which we, the members of the proposed GT, belong, impacts the specific topic of interest: Latin American politicized and mobile social science.

Each new historical period confronts us once again with fundamental questions about the purpose and intended audience of the social sciences and humanities. This is vital for understanding which political and social project corresponds to the preferred choices in science policy. Based on this understanding, we propose the notions of politicized social science and mobile social science.

The concept of politicized social science is inspired by the debates present in the so-called Latin American School of Thought on Science, Technology and Development in the region during the 1950s and 1970s. The purpose of this group - researchers, technologists, engineers and other thinkers - was to investigate the possibilities of establishing a proposal for technological development of its own - Latin American - from the insertion of sectoral and national policies, as a fundamental variable of integral economic and social development (M. Vidal, and Mari, 2002).

In this context, Osca Vasravsky criticizes what he calls scientism—characterized as a way of doing science detached from politics and, ultimately, from society—and proposes a politicized science: one that is linked to social commitment and willing to methodologically revise the parameters that form part of the scientific edifice in light of social change (Riccono, 2009). Furthermore, secondly, we propose linking, challenging, and complicating the category of politicized social science with that of knowledge mobilization. The mobilization of knowledge emerged in 2000 (Levesque, P., 2009; Sá C., 2011, Levin, 2011; Qi & Levin, 2013; Naidorf, 2014, Fischman, 2014), framed within the discussion on the need for social science research policies to adapt to a new requirement: the production of a type of social knowledge "ready for action." This implies going beyond the traditional dissemination stage: an additional function of the social science researcher would be to find ways to link the production of social knowledge with the use of that same social knowledge.

During 2022, Argentina, Honduras, and Colombia increased their respective science and technology budgets, which is a positive indicator but not the only one. Therefore, we propose to address the relationship between science and society by contributing to the understanding of the impact of the social sciences on Latin American and Caribbean communities through the categories of politicization and mobilization of science.

If we had succeeded in highlighting the critical location of the issue in the context and in Latin American and Caribbean public policy and in relation to the global dynamics in times of great dynamism, deepening of a regionalism with popular roots that differed from the exclusionary policies initiated with the dictatorships of the Southern Cone, in the previous context of retreat and reconfiguration of multinational right-wing movements linked with local ones and, at the present moment, with the perspective of new governments with popular and democratic bases such as Mexico, Honduras, Colombia, Argentina, Chile and Brazil, we are committed to continuing and deepening the approach of politicized and mobile social science as the axis of an inquiry that is both comprehensive of the changes and transformative in its capacity for intervention.

In this regard, we agreed to maintain the thematic focus, in order to deepen and strengthen the main emphases placed on an inquiry that began in the 2013-2016 Working Group entitled "Politicized and Mobile Social Science in and for a Latin American Research Agenda Oriented to Priorities from the University," and continued in 2016-2019 and 2019-2022 as "politicized social science." For the next period, we will maintain the concept of politicized social science, but will recover and add the category "mobile science," resulting in "mobile and politicized social science." In this way, the two main axes that have been central to the Working Group are articulated, and in this new period, it is enriched by new and renowned colleagues and researchers in training, in order to sustain a project of genuine exchange that allows us to achieve this understanding and transformation from the countries where we live, but with a perspective focused on Latin America, its science, and its politics.

The theoretical relevance of this topic is justified by the resurgence of this type of questioning regarding the position of the social sciences and humanities and their pronouncements in the current context, which is once again taking on the appearance of an epochal shift. In this sense, the proposed focus on politicized and dynamic social science, which we analyzed and published collectively in the special issue of the Cuban Journal of Higher Education in 2015, centered on understanding the relevant policies and priority issues in each of the countries comprising Working Group 6, provides the foundation for this ongoing project. Also included are the publications of the GT from 2019 in Dossier Eccos, a journal of the University of 9 de Julio, Brazil, which analyzes the progress of the topic and the current situation regarding the proposal of a national Science model and the article from 2022 about the dynamics of integration between science, State and politics at present (Alonso, M., Perrotta, D. and Riccono, G., 2022).

It is possible to identify some trends after the year 2000 that permeate and update the challenges for the social sciences in Latin America. First, there is the establishment of priorities and priority topics. A trend is emerging toward reinforcing priority topics, oriented toward local needs, complemented by open topics and those that scientists consider relevant (either due to gaps in research or because they align with current trends in international agendas). Prioritizing implies promoting a particular area of ​​knowledge or problem in a specific way (Naidorf, 2011; Emiliozi, 2012).

In the post-2000 context, marked by the renewed role of Latin American states and their orientation toward inclusive development models (Perrotta, 2010)—a trend characterized by some as post-liberal (Sader, 2009; Sanahuja, 2012)—the function of science has become a priority discussion. This has led to the creation and reorientation of the actions of Ministries of Science and Technology, as well as the reorganization of the science policies of universities themselves. In this sense, both the Ministries and the universities have prioritized the development of areas of knowledge considered strategic for solving the most pressing social problems identified by scientific communities.

While we can acknowledge a distrust of claims of relevance, having identified them as market-driven or as part of a supposed social irresponsibility on the part of academics (hence the appeal to responsibility so prevalent in neoliberal discourse), current trends show an acceptance of aspects linked to the social relevance of research. Appeals to priority topics vary in relation to their definition, whether through reference to the establishment of specific socio-productive centers or through a general appeal to topics that produce results, leading to greater social inclusion or the solution of national problems.

Secondly, the formation of a new researcher profile focused on problem-solving. Some countries that have increased resources in science and technology had begun to outline policies linking science, development, and social inclusion. There was a clear desire to develop a new type of researcher, one that differs from the traditional model which, under the guise of "freedom of choice" in research topics, dictates submission to the research agendas of developed countries. However, this demand has been hampered by the imperative of accountability and evaluation of academic work based on parameters that fail to capture this priority-oriented scientific activity, as they rely on measurements disconnected from the social application of the knowledge generated.

Within this framework, the debates and demands structured around the concept of knowledge mobilization become central. The category assumes different perspectives and definitions, for example—and to begin with—one refers to the use of evidence and research results for decision-making in public policy (Nutley et al., 2007); other perspectives understand it as a method or tool that facilitates the translation of research results into action (Bennet et al., 2007); it is also defined in terms of efforts to share research results with potential users (Levin, B., 2011); and, finally, as the actions that allow knowledge to be made ready for action and its intervention through interlocutors (Levesque, 2009). The notion of knowledge mobilization refers to the preparation of knowledge for its practical application (Levesque, 2009; Sá, 2011). Unlike dissemination, which inherently involves no commitment to responsibility in the process leading to the dissemination of developed knowledge, knowledge mobility or mobilization involves an intermediate step between the resulting knowledge and its practical application. The metaphor used to differentiate dissemination from knowledge mobilization is that of a plant growing and simply scattering seeds across a plot of land. While dissemination merely involves sowing seeds, mobilization involves other processes related to cultivating the soil: fertilization, watering, and the commitment to ensuring the plant's growth.

It is possible to suggest that in science policy, Latin America is traversed by two models: one tending toward an emancipatory social science and another that measures its impact based on a narrow and reductionist view of productivity. To a large extent, the coming years will be marked by the dispute between these two trends. We believe that the concept of a mobile and politicized social science has the potential to broaden the understanding of these renewed development styles, providing tools for debate and the definition of public policies.

Therefore, we based the formation of the Working Group on the results of our work, the importance of understanding and transforming the critical present, and the need to sustain and strengthen collective discussion spaces like the one being formed here and its replication in other spaces for exchange, training, and dissemination in which each of the proposed members actively participates and on which we intervene. This time, with one member of the coordination team in Argentine Patagonia, another in Mexico, and members from nine different countries and diverse regions within those countries.

Today, politicized social science manifests itself through the public intervention of scientists in understanding the options presented as inevitable, in demonstrations alongside other sectors and social movements that protest and demand the social gains that are intended to be dismantled, as well as the future prospects in Latin America that are intended to be diluted in Ceocratic discourses.

We believe that the collective organization of these spaces and their interrelation could become benchmarks for a new alternative future project that will have to be configured in dialogue with various progressive sectors, although divergent among themselves.

Therefore, these categories mentioned allow us to understand the present, with a perspective of historicity, they challenge us to recognize and recover the classic neoliberal theoretical and conceptual tools as well as to create new analytical categories to understand the new direction of science policy.