This research cluster focuses on the construction and mobilization of collective identities. We thus explore how states, supranational institutions and civil society (e.g., social movements) create, transform, or negate particular social categories and identities; how large-scale economic changes, political transformations, and international migration flows affect their identity projects; and how ordinary citizens respond to the identity work of these collective actors. In exploring those issues we seek to identify possible synergies that cut across the rather compartmentalized bodies of work on race and ethnicity, nationalism, social class, migration, and citizenship.

We approach these broader theoretical concerns at a variety of different scales and analyze collective identity formation from a comparative vantage point—across diverse time periods and geographical contexts. Our substantive interests include the role of state institutions—in tandem with supranational institutions such as the European Union—in shaping nationalism and ethnicity in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America; the connection between peace agreements, identity-based mobilization and political stability in Southeast Asia, the diversity effects of distinct immigrant incorporation regimes in Europe, and the link between Brexit and protest identities.