‘Sometimes I wish I was an “ex” ex-prisoner’: identity processes in the collective action participation of former prisoners in Northern Ireland

Since the signing of the Northern Ireland peace agreement, a plethora of community-based prisoner self-help organizations has been established wherein former prisoners and staff, manage and deliver services to colleagues. By forging and maintaining their collective identities through community-based mutual aid, members of these self-help organizations not only have progressed to create individual change/assistance but have also developed and evolved to tackle serious wider social issues which impact the members of their organizations. This is a critical analysis of how the conditions of a post-conflict society can influence both the development and evolution of these organizations and also how members situate their claims about the self in the organization and beyond. Using the social movement framework, it is argued that the work of these self-help organizations have given rise to a new politics of identity – the ‘politically motivated’ ex-prisoner.