ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how Latino/a legal professionals from the 1.5- and 2nd-generation—those who had thick/asserted racial/ethnic identities—deal with their identities differently based on the situation they are in. Two specific types of situations emerged in which identity management for legal professionals in Operation Streamline took different forms: (1) Talking to or about outsider critiques from activists/media/scholars and others who are not directly involved in Operation Streamline and (2) Interacting with or talking about interactions with clients in their daily work. This chapter demonstrates how these two situations (client-oriented versus activist-oriented) impact these 1.5- and 2nd-generation Latino/a legal professionals in their balancing act between role and social identities. These two situations call up different levels of work-related role strain as well as increased or decreased competition between their role and social identities.
