‘Las Kellys son las que limpian’: Collective identity and social media in the mobilisation of room attendants in Spain

Abstract

In this qualitative study, we focus on Las Kellys, a Spanish movement of room attendants who have mobilised against labour precarisation and social devaluation, to address two challenges: (1) to characterise the role of social media in the construction and politicisation of collective identity as a stepping stone to mobilisation, and (2) to describe the lines of interplay between online politicisation of collective identity and other mobilisation factors such as grievances, social embeddedness and efficacy. Findings suggest that (1) room attendants build a politicised collective identity on Facebook, which functions as both an online community of coping and a locus of politicisation and micro-mobilisation, and (2) online politicisation of collective identity happens in online/offline interplay with the process of consensus mobilisation around the room attendants’ issues (grievances), the social capital accumulated within intragroup and intergroup networks (social embeddedness) and the expectation of changing conditions and/or policies through protest (efficacy).