Group membership is not identity unless it carries self-defining meaning.

Evidence

Studies that used proxies for identity, such as single-choice questions on ethnicity or nationality were excluded from this study because group-membership does not necessarily equate with identity, unless individuals derive social and personal meaning from it relevant for their self-definition. — Lea Echelmeyer, Anne-Marie Slotboom, and Frank Weerman, The Putative Effect of Identity on…, 34

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes ascriptive category membership from subjective identification — a common conflation in radicalization research.
• QUESTION: How many otherwise-relevant studies were dropped for using ethnicity or nationality as an identity proxy?