The study of identity and social movements has been heavily influenced by the symbolic interactionist perspective, which stresses the active construction of meaning in human interaction. Thus, scholars recognize that the identities that are relevant to social movements are not simply preexisting sets of characteristics that individuals bring with them to the mass march or meeting hall; instead, these identities are actively created, debated, and sometimes even unmade and established anew in the course of collective action. Of course, all of this activity takes work. The concept of identity work in social movements therefore refers to all the work involved in creating, displaying, and managing the identities that are relevant to collective action. The term is borrowed from Snow and Anderson's ( 1987) discussion of identity work among people experiencing homelessness, which demonstrates how people construct and maintain positive personal identities that are distinct from the negative labels assigned to them by others. It is also related to Hochschild's ( 1979, 1983) concept of “emotion work,” which references the management of emotion in accordance with social norms about the situationally appropriate display of feelings.

Identity work is directed both internally and externally. Internally, activists must construct and maintain a coherent collective identity that helps sustain individuals' participation in the movement; externally, the task is to present the movement to opponents and third parties in a particular light in order to gain support and achieve goals. Perhaps the most developed, and therefore best understood, identity work processes are internal in nature and focus on collective identity construction and identity convergence. The former term refers to the dynamics involved in the creation of a shared sense of “we,” such as boundaries, consciousness, and negotiation (Taylor and Whittier 1992), while the latter describes the process by which individual identities become congruent with a movement's collective identity (Snow and McAdam 2000).

Scholarship also addresses the challenges associated with identity work. Many of these challenges result from diversity within movements (Reger, Myers, and Einwohner 2008). There can be different ways to present a group strategically (Bernstein 1997), which can lead to disagreements about who “we” are. In such situations, some activists may feel only a partial convergence between their individual identity and the movement's collective identity, and may therefore need to engage in identity justification work in order to maintain their participation (Robnett 2005). Further, the construction and maintenance of a group's identity can be complicated by differences among activists, such as those based on race, class, ethnicity, immigration status, or generation (Whittier 1995; Reger 2002; Luna 2016). Other challenges stem from the broader context in which identity work takes place. For instance, in repressive contexts the dangers associated with activism may force activists to pass, thereby hiding rather than celebrating a valued identity (Einwohner 2006). Further, structural power asymmetries among activists may exacerbate the hard work of constructing collective identity (Gawerc 2016). At the same time, spillover strategies from other movements may empower activists to reveal stigmatized identities, such as those based on sexual orientation and immigration status, despite the risks (Terriquez 2015). Difficulties notwithstanding, identity work is thought to be important, and possibly necessary, for sustained activism: if not done successfully, movements can splinter or die out entirely (Glass 2009).

One topic that is rich for continued theoretical development is the role of technology in identity work, such as the use of social media in bridging divides within movements. Social media creates spaces for activists who are members of marginalized communities (Brown et al. 2017) and can potentially minimize the difficulties of identity work. Social media can present its own challenges, however, as a lack of face-to-face engagement may harm movements in the long run (Tufekci 2017). Further, in cases of transnational activism, activists working across borders to solve a problem in a particular country or region can face difficulties stemming from differences in the way issues are framed and groups are understood (Hertel 2006). Global identity work may face distinct challenges, and may therefore follow different processes than those that have been identified by the extant literature. Thus, additional work on a variety of cases, in different settings, should prove to be useful.

SEE ALSO: Collective Identity ; Identity Fields ; Identity Politics ; Participation in Social Movements ; Solidarity and Movements.