Recruitment and disengagement: two sides of the same coin or different phenomena?

We investigate the disengagement of four former activists of the Landless Rural Workers Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra—MST) in Brazil. The MST is the largest Brazilian social movement and has mobilized activists for over 30 years. The trajectories of recruitment, participation and disengagement of its activists serve as emblematic cases for the study of disengagement in social movements in general. This research contributes to the understanding of the activists’ disengagement from a social movement, a phenomenon that has been little studied. It sheds new light on the study of disengagement in two ways. First, some characteristics of the MST, in particular that many activists live in tight-knit communities, children participation and the activists’ long-lasting participation, open up new possibilities for the analysis of factors that influence disengagement pointed out in previous studies. In addition, the analysis of former activists’ whole trajectories of recruitment-participation-disengagement allows us show that considering disengagement as the analogous process as recruitment cannot explain all of its aspects. Given that the reasons that make someone leave a movement are, not always, the same that made someone join it. A multiple-case study design was used. The semi-structured interviews encompassing the engagement trajectories of the former activists served very well to the purpose of evidencing the multi-level character of the disengagement decision-making. Our analysis reveals how the social context, the movement and the activists’ personal characteristics in conjunction play a pivotal role.


Introduction
Why do activists end their participation? The phenomenon of activist disengagement has yet to be researched extensively. As van der Veen and Klandermans (1989) infer, scholars' lack of interest in ending participation is because some have considered the process of leaving a movement as the reverse process of joining it (recruitment) (e.g., Glasser 1972). Recruitment and disengagement are seen as two sides of the same coin. The collective actions theory (Olson 1968) states that the decision to start to participate in a social movement is a rational decision. Individuals weigh the costs and benefits of participating in collective actions before deciding to join a social movement. If individuals determine that the benefits of participating outweigh the costs, it is more likely that they will continue participating in collective actions. Nevertheless, Klandermans (1997) also argues that, during the trajectory of an individual's participation, new experiences arise and these make participation a different process from the recruitment. As a result, the individual's disengagement requires the weighing of a new set of perceived costs and benefits that emerge only after joining the movement. Therefore, different factors can influence the individuals' participation in different points of their activism. Following this reasoning on disengagement, the activists' motives for leaving would be the result of an unbalanced weighing of the costs and benefits of participating in a movement and this evaluation is constantly updated during the trajectory of activism. In this vein, recruitment and disengagement would be different phenomena.
What makes a participation more costly? Researchers have found that former activists usually leave a movement due to a number of reasons: they do not feel represented by the movement anymore (Passy and Giugni 2000;Downton and Wehr 1998), they feel frustrated and powerless (Klandermans 1997); they had negative experiences interacting with others activists (Klandermans 1997;Corrigall-Brown 2006); they would like to have more time for their personal and professional life (Downton and Wehr 1998;Passy and Giugni 2000;Nepstad 2008) and/or they are not able to handle the psychological, material and time demands that a life of activism requires (Klandermans 1997;Nepstad 2008).
Moreover, identities have a key role in the activists' disengagement. Before understanding why, it is necessary to disentangle the meanings of identities. Identity theory defines identities as "(…) parts of the self composed of the meanings 1 that persons attach to multiple roles 2 they typically play in highly differentiated contemporary society" (Stryker and Burke 2000, p. 285) (see also Mead 1934). The identities are categorized as role, group and person identities. Stets and Serpe (2013:38) clarify that role identity "(…) is a set of internalized meanings associated with a role". Group are the meanings that are evoked when an individual relates with other individuals that form groups, such as family, colleagues from work and so on (Stets and Serpe 2013). In this case, the authors highlight that the individuals that form the group attempt to fulfill the expectations of behavior of the other members. Finally, person identity is the set of meanings that make someone unique, i.e., an individual (Stets and Serpe 2013).
Identity theory gives us a clue about how the identities are organized and displayed. Stryker and Serpe (1994) argue that the identities are organized hierarchically and that a certain identity has more chance of being displayed rather others depending on its salience. Identity salience, in this turn, is the readiness to display an identity rather than another in a certain situation (Stryker and Serpe 1994;Stryker 2000;Brenner et al. 2014). The more the individual interacts with a certain group, the more likely his/her identity that fits better with this group will be salient (Stryker and Serpe 1994). The salient identity represents the situational self while the prominent identity reflects the individual's ideal self. Prominent identity concerns which identity the individual would like to act out in a situation, while salient identity is which identity is more likely to be actually displayed in a situation (Brenner et al. 2014). Indeed, Brenner et al. (2014) found that prominent identity is a predictor of salient identity in many situations, even though there are some cases in which what someone wants to act out is not what he or she really does.
To the understand the engagement and disengagement in social movements it is important to consider also the social identity theory and the collective identity theory. Social identity conceptualizes in terms of group membership. As defined by Tajfel (1978), it is "(…) an individual self-concept which derives from his knowledge of his membership of a social group, together with the value and emotional significance attached to the membership" (p. 63). In other words, social identity is what makes someone feel part of a social group (in-group) and different from others (out-groups) (Reicher 2004). Note that social identity is different from group identity. While the first is related to self or imposed identification to one category of the society, group identity implies the interrelation of the individuals of a group and the individuals' behavior in accordance with the other members' expectations (see Stets and Serpe 2013).
It is important to note that being part of a social group does not necessarily imply participating in any action promoted by members of this group. Social groups are the individuals' categories, which are created socially, such as gender, ethnicity, nationality, social class, etc. Therefore, as people are part of many social groups, they can show many social identities. An individual is part of a social group when he/she self-identifies and/or is identified by the society as such. Indeed, Morris (1992) states that social identities can be 'imposed'. An individual can be categorized by society as a woman, European or black person, even though he/she does not self-identify with these categories. This person may be 'read' by the society in the same way as another person who actually identifies with the categories. Within a movement, the activists can hold many social identifies related to their gender, nationality, ethnicity, specific preferences, etc. Among those, being an activist of a specific social movement can be a social identity.
In addition, when the members of a group share the same beliefs (Taylor and Whittier 1992) and when 'I' becomes 'we' (Melucci 1989), i.e., when the individuals start to define themselves as part of a group rather than as single individuals, this group has a collective identity. It is through the individuals' interactions that the collective identities are shared and the reinforced (see Gamson 1991;Corrigall-Brown 2006;Mannarini and Fedi 2011). Although social identity and collective identity seem to be similar concepts, they are not. Social identity is conceived as the in-group characteristics possessed by each member of the group, while collective identity has to do with the characteristics of the group itself (Klandermans et al. 2002). To illustrate, someone can be a woman and participate in a feminist social movement. Being a woman is one of her social identities. The group of individuals that form the feminist movement, women or not, shares feminist ideas through social interactions, which form and transform the collective identity of the movement. In addition, someone does not need to consider himself/herself to be part of group in order to hold a specific social identity, nor share beliefs with other members of the same social group (see Morris 1992). On the contrary, the collective identity of a specific group develops during the interactions of the group's members. It is constructed by the members of the group through the sharing of beliefs among them.
In sum, there is not a single identity. Each individual has a person, role, group identity as well as many social identities. Those who are additionally members of a group and interact with the other members may develop also the collective identity. In addition, these identities are organized in a hierarchy, in which the ones that are most probable to be acted out are salient and the better valued ones are prominent. It is important to note that these identities, except collective identity, may overlap in many occasions and may not be easily separated (see e.g., Stets and Serpe 2013;White 2010). Therefore, whenever the specification of the identity is difficult to determine and not relevant to understand the analysis, we will mention only 'identity', which can refer to any kind of identity, except collective identity.
Turning back to the identities' role to the activists' disengagement, Corrigall-Brown (2006) argues that the individuals' participation tends to decrease when the collective identity is no longer seen as congruent with their identities (see also van der Veen and Klandermans 1989;Gamson 1991;Klandermans 1997). Indeed, (Passy and Giugni 2000) note that the individuals' perceptions are gradually modified by changes in the individuals' personal life-sphere, which shares beliefs that are incongruent with those of the movement. This may lead to the disconnection of identities, a loss of identification with the movement and less frequent interactions with other activists (Passy and Giugni 2000). The authors observed that this situation makes the individuals' participation costly. In the same vein, Corrigall-Brown (2006) states that, when the individuals' ties inside a social movement become less important, they are less likely to bear the costs of participation.
Another circumstance that can cause identity incongruence occurs when the movement's beliefs change, but the activists' beliefs do not. Some activists may find that the organization does not represent their interests and beliefs anymore (Corrigall-Brown 2006). Similarly, having in mind that salient and prominent identities are distinctive parts of the self and that both may not always be in accordance is pivotal to understand why some people are not able to assume the costs of continuing displaying a role that they like (see Stryker and Serpe 1994). In addition, Stryker (2000) argues that individuals have different levels of participation in a social movement due to their multiple identities and the multiple situations in different social networks (formed by other individuals inside and outside the movement, such as in the family, at work and so on) in which these identities are evoked. The less the individuals' identities displayed in and outside the movement overlap, the higher their chance of leaving the movement. In this vein, as Stryker (2000) explains, the more the individuals' social relations are formed by other individuals that allow them to evoke their activist identity, e.g., other activists in the movement, their family, in their work, the higher is the chance that these individuals participate in the movement. As more social networks overlap, the activist may dedicate more time and energy to the participation in the movement (Stryker 2000). This reasoning is similar to what McAdam and Paulsen (1993) called multiple embeddings. According to these authors, multiple embeddings are a variety of social ties that are more or less favorable to the participation. Then, the participation is more likely when favorable ties to the participation are predominant among these multiple ties.
At an organizational level, Sandell (1999) discovered that changes in the composition of the membership that form the social networks inside the movement have an impact on their participation. The author concludes that the activists' chances of leaving a movement increase after relevant others drop out. Moreover, Knoke (1981), studying commitment and detachment in voluntary associations, noticed that the more difficult the communication within the association and the lower the individuals' influence on the associations' decision-making are, the higher the chances become that the individuals leave. As a result, individuals have to feel that they are able to self-regulate their participation in order to remain in the association. Furthermore, when the organization's tactics fail regularly, that is, when the activists' collective actions do not achieve their expected goals, the activists tend to feel demoralized (Klandermans 1989) and the perception of weak control over the collective policy may increase their detachment towards an organization (Knoke 1981). Along this line of reasoning, Hirschman (1992) observes that the arousal of jealousy, envy, disgust and hatred can contribute to the activists' disengagement. Indeed, Jasper (1998) argues that not only rational factors, but also emotions play a relevant role in the individual's decision to join as well as to leave a movement. Yet, insufficient social support to cope with the sacrifices, that are common in a long-term career as an activist, makes handling stress and organizing personal time more difficult (see Klandermans 1997;Mannarini and Talò 2011).
In order to study the activists' disengagement, we choose the Landless Rural Workers Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra-MST). The MST has been a central actor in the political arena and a widely known social movement throughout Brazil. Since its foundation, in 1984, it advocates for Pan effective agrarian reform, i.e. the distribution of agrarian properties to the families of rural workers who are willing to farm, but cannot afford to purchase land. It is a long-term social movement, meaning that many activists partake in sustained participation. Indeed, some MST activists, known as Landless (Sem Terras), have been participating in the movement for more than three decades. Therefore, the study of the disengagement of its activists serves as an emblematic case on how individuals leave a social movement after long-lasting participations.
This study has also an innovative character, i.e., the study of the disengagement of activists who started to participate in the movement during childhood and lived in communities organized by the movement itself. The movement is formed, mainly, by entire families-men, women, teenagers, children and the elderly who live in the movement's tight-knit communities. These two characteristics of activists have been neglected in social movement studies (for an exception, see Rodgers 2005). Furthermore, the children live in these communities with their parents and attend the movement's meetings and other collective actions. This means that they do not voluntarily decide to join the MST, but they will need to decide to stay in the movement or to leave it when they become adults.
The MST had its apogee in the 1990s, when the number of collective actions and its visibility were higher. By the early 2000s, with the election of president Luís Inácio Lula da Silva from the Labor Party, an allied of the MST, the movement went through a period of less collective actions compared to the 1990s. However, in this period the movement had more achievements related to its main goal, i.e., land expropriation and number of settlements conceded by the government. After that, the movement had another period of few achievements, during the mandate of Dilma Rousseff. Although she was also from the left-wing Labor Party, she had a different agenda regarding the agrarian reform, which prioritized the improvement of the infrastructure of existing settlements instead of the creation of new ones (Instituto Nacional de Colonização e Reforma Agrária-INCRA 2012). With the beginning of President Jair Bolsonaro's term in 2019, the movement is going through a hard period. The president from the extreme right openly declares himself against the MST and considers the movement's activists as criminals. He takes decisions that put the activists' physical integrity in risk (i.e., permission for carrying of weapons in rural areas) and hampers the agrarian reform in the country (Agência Senado 2019; Maisonnave 2020).
In sum, the activists have more chances to disengage if there is an incongruence among, at least, two of the following components: personal characteristics, social movement's collective identity and the context outside the movement. Thinking in an individual level of analysis, the incongruence between salient and prominent identities may be also a clue. This incongruence is a personal perception, being the result of the activists' ongoing evaluation during their entire engagement trajectory. We doubt that knowing the reasons for joining a movement is enough to understand what led someone to leave it. The participation trajectory is a key element for understanding disengagement. The trajectory of activism is not static and personal characteristics, social movement's collective identity and the context outside the movement may change as well as the activists' motives to participate or leave the movement. In this vein, this research sheds new light on social movement studies, because we examine the former activists' whole trajectories of recruitment-participation-disengagement. Our findings, derived from the accounts of former activists with different backgrounds and motivations to participate, help to clarify the roles of individual characteristics, the movement, the social networks and political context in the disengagement process. Moreover, some characteristics of the MST (i.e. living in the movement's communities and children participation) open up new possibilities for the analysis of the factors that influence the individuals' disengagement pointed out in previous studies.

Methodology
After obtaining approval from the Brazilian Ethics Committee for research, the data collection was carried out in Brazil between April 2013 and February 2014. Before participating, the interviewees signed a declaration of informed consent in which the research aims and their confidentiality rights were explained. The participants did not receive any money or other benefits in exchange for their voluntary collaboration. A multiple-case study design was used (see e.g., Yin 2003;Dion 1998). The sampling of the four interviewees followed a convenience scheme, i.e., we selected the interviewees according to the contact information that was possible to find and their availability. We also used a critical case sampling scheme to select the interviewees. Namely, the individuals were chosen based on specific characteristics that allowed for compelling insights into the phenomenon (see Onwuegbuzie and Collins 2007). We prioritized interviews with those who had distinct experiences when ending their participation, which Onwuegbuzie and Collins (2007) call critical cases.
Among the four interviewees with at least 10 years of participation, three of them were no longer part of the movement, while one had quit for a certain period, but had already re-joined the movement at the time of the interview. Additionally, two interviewees lived in settlements when they participated in the MST and continued to live there after quitting. The remaining two interviewees resided in urban centers and had never lived in any movement community. The only woman is also the only interviewee that grew up in a MST settlement.
Through semi-structured interviews lasting between one and two hours, the former activists could report, in the form of a narrative, what they remembered from their trajectory of recruitment, participation and disengagement in the movement. The interviews were singularly conducted and recorded by one interviewer in private. Two interviews were conducted in the Brazilian city of Salvador, in the state of Bahia, one in the state of Pernambuco and the last one in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. Two interviews were done in MST settlements, one in the former activist's apartment and another in a café. First, the four interviewees provided their personal information (name and age) and how long they had participated in the MST. Next, they were asked to talk about their lives before participating in the movement, why they decided to participate and whether they had gone through situations that had put their lives in danger. They were also asked about the advantages, difficulties and disadvantages of participating in the MST, why they decided to leave the movement, their current relation with the members of the movement and what the MST represents for them. Additional questions were asked whenever a relevant topic came up.
As expected from a multiple-case study design, for the content analysis of the interviews, we considered each case separately and looked for patterns in each. Then, the data were compared in order to identify similarities and contradictions. Finally, we draw conclusions (Yin 2003).

From recruitment to disengagement: four activism trajectories
Since the disengagement process has its roots in the activists' recruitment and participation, the trajectory of an individual needs to be understood. What the activists expected, needed, experienced and got inside and outside the movement during their engagement trajectory are crucial points that may make their participation more gratifying or costly. As it will be noticed, the former activists considered a variety of factors and not just a single one, when judging their participation in the MST. Nevertheless, in each case one specific factor acted as the final straw that led the activist to leave.

An activism trajectory of an identity seeker
Throughout his adulthood, the 48 years-old and middle-class Renato has been engaged in a variety of organizations. In the 1980s, before joining the MST, Renato was a member of the Communist Party of Brazil (Partido Comunista do Brasil) and in the early 1990s he went to Mexico to join the Zapatista National Liberation Army (Ejército Zapatista de la Liberación Nacional). Renato states that the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was a turning point in his life. Before this historic event, he perceived his membership in the Brazilian Communist Party as a way of voicing a grassroots struggle. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Renato felt that, with the rupture in the Communist tradition, the reconfigured Communist Party had lost its initial purpose.
So, what was this process of rupture with the communist tradition in the sense of a rebounding of the communist parties? (...) This rebounding culminated in a change of direction. On behalf of a democratic socialism, many parties lost their way in the sense of what could be a socialist perspective. (...) Anyway, things became more complex, in the sense that things were no longer black and white. The Communist Party had changed its meaning.
In 1991, Renato left the Communist Party and did not find any organization in the Brazilian context where his beliefs were shared. Therefore, he decided to go to Chiapas, Mexico, in 1994 to join a movement that better matched his beliefs: the Zapatistas. The Zapatistas had two main characteristics that he admired: first, its capacity to forego grassroots struggle and participate politically without being a party and second, its horizontal organizational structure. In fact, he remembers the period in the Zapatistas as a gratifying experience, where he could see his beliefs put into practice.
For personal reasons, he had to leave the Zapatistas after four years of participation and went back to Brazil in 1998. During the time he spent in Mexico, he learned about the El Dourado dos Carajás massacre 3 involving MST activists. He said how, from that moment on, he realized that the MST had broader claims than the struggle for land. He began to view the MST as a social movement that fought for change in society as a whole.
It's as if [after the massacre, the MST] had really arrived as a movement, whose struggle was that of the rural workers, but with the broader perspective of a struggle for a different society.
Upon arriving in his hometown, Ipiaú, he had not met any MST activists. Therefore, he went directly to the movement's headquarter in his state, Bahia, and asked the MST leaders how he could join the movement.
Going back to Brazil, I contacted the MST immediately, because I had already heard of the MST as an organization that, to me, represented this new kind of organization. That is, the social movements, whose struggle is based on 'direct action' [without the mediation of political parties].
Renato's experience of joining the movement did not follow the pattern described by Snow and McAdam (2000), which revealed that recruitment occurs more often within the individuals' pre-existing networks. Moreover, he participated in the MST by recruiting new people. As his friend Pedro, another former activist, observed, Renato was extremely relevant to the movement because he was also able to mobilize people from the middle-class in the region. In this vein, he as well as many MST's middle-class participants are what McCarthy and Zald (1977) call conscience constituents, because they "(…) are directed supporters of a social movement organization [SMO] who do not stand to benefit directly from its success in goal accomplishment" (McCarthy andZald 1977, p. 1222).
Renato initially recognized the same characteristics in the MST that he had seen in the Zapatistas 4 : a horizontal organizational structure and non-partisan convictions. However, with the election of president Luís Inácio Lula da Silva, the political context changed and the MST began a close relationship with the current government. The Labor Party was a historical ally of the MST. In order to maintain good relations with the government and not miss a key opportunity provided by the opening of the political context, the movement assumed an ambiguous relationship with President Lula. Although the leaders of the movement did not agree with some of the measures adopted by the government, the movement publicly positioned itself as an ally of the Labor Party.
Renato's life has been marked by ongoing attempts to express his ideology. Indeed, he behaves as an identity-seeker. This is how the individuals, who strongly identified with a particular identity and that, actively, search for groups (social movements, cults and subcultures) with perspectives and practices that correspond to and allow for the expression of their identity are called (Downton and Wehr 1998;Snow and McAdam 2000). Along these lines, Renato's engagement trajectory fits well with the assumption of Klandermans (2004) that one of the individual's demands for social movement participation is a search for a meaning and expression of worldviews. The chances that an individual will participate in a movement are higher if the social movement supplies this demand (Klandermans 2004). As already mentioned, many scholars also argue that participation in collective actions is less likely when personal and collective identities are not in accordance (see Wehr 1991, 1998;Gamson 1991;Barkan, Cohn and Whitaker 1993;Passy and Giugni 2000;Nepstad 2004;Corrigall-Brown 2006;Mannarini and Fedi 2011).
In fact, when the MST started to embrace new values that Renato disagreed with, he could not negotiate the discrepancy between what he believed and the movement's new aims and these circumstances contributed to his later disengagement. In terms of the identity theory, it is reasonable to say that Renato's identity as an activist is a prominent identity, which for a while found the proper conditions in the MST's context to be also salient. With the changes in the situation, he felt that his ideal identity did not fit with context anymore. Brenner et al. (2014) found that in many occasions, the prominent is an antecedent of salient identity, as seems to be the case for Renato. He, an identity-seeker, had to face the discrepancy between his ideal self (prominent identity of an activist of specific kind of social movement) and the changes in the behavior of some leaders of movement, which no longer was in accordance with the salient identity that he was able and willing to evoke. Finally, it is also possible to conceive that the meanings and expectations (role) that Renato had for a role identity as an activist were not the same meanings and expectations any more that others inside the movement had for their role identity of MST activist (see also Stryker and Serpe 1994;Stryker 2000).
And this [the activists' affiliation with the Labor Party and their political candidacy] implied a change in the movement in Bahia and I think that it happened in some other states as well. (...) It was a tendency in which he [the MST activist who ran for a political position] started to act and even appear as a leading figure (...). Other leaders, who also had this tendency, started to hope to achieve the same thing. In this way, shortly after, in 2000, I was already in a process of parting [with the movement], because this [the movement's involvement with a political party] was already established. [And I saw it] in a way as something abnormal.
He did not accept the changes, since they contradicted his ideas, which resemble his ideal self, on how a social movement should struggle for its goals.
But this [his disagreement with leaders of the movement] had much to do with the fact that the main leader of the movement had started to act with electoral ambitions. Which is to say, he ran for a political position in the state and was not elected the first time. However, he continued operating or aiming for this path. As a result, [in 2013] he's now a congressman.
This new arrangement of the movement highlighted another situation that Renato disagreed with: the organizational structure of the movement was not as horizontal as he thought. To him, the political candidacy of some leaders demonstrated how the MST was focused on the image of a few leaders who were meant to be models for the others.
So, the movement did not expel me or whatever... but I started to sense an environment where, at least regarding its administration, there was a tension, a certain discomfort. As I said, even though nobody had said 'get out' or whatever... but, maybe it had been much more my incapacity, even a lack of a maturity, a certain pragmatism. Because, even after that, I knew that I could forge a path that wouldn't prevent me from continuing to participate. Anyway, that's how things happened.
The reasons that caused Renato to join the movement were the same that made him leave it. He joined the MST because he found a place where he could display his identity and he left it because the movement's values no longer resembled his identity. Accordingly, Corrigall-Brown (2006) argues that the individuals' participation tends to decrease when the movement's beliefs change, but the activists' beliefs do not, because this may cause an identity incongruence. Corrigall-Brown's (2006) findings help us to identify what happens in the dynamic of the individual and the group, while the results of Brenner et al. (2014) give us a tool to understand how the individual identities reorganize when he or she decides to leave a movement. Brenner et al. (2014) observed that often prominent and salient identities are congruent and the former, which resembles the individuals' ideal self, usually is a predictor of salient identity. Interestingly, these findings fit with what Downton and Wehr (1998) as well as Snow and McAdam (2000) described as identity-seeker. In this vein, an identity-seeker, as Renato well illustrates, would be someone who needs to keep prominent and salient identities congruent. The MST supplied Renato's demand to express his worldviews for a while and, when some other activists' attitudes contradicted his worldview, he left the movement.
Yet, it is noteworthy the powerful emotions that followed Renato throughout his trajectory from recruitment to disengagement: enthusiasm, joy, delusion, regret. In fact, Jasper (1998) highlights the important role of emotions in the activists' ending participation decision. In addition, Renato still has some identification with the MST as an organization. White (2010) explains that, although the members of a movement may self-identify as activists and share collective identity, personally their expectations and meanings related with their activism may differ. In this vein, Renato's case would be an extreme of this situation. He still shares the MST's collective identity (he identifies with the MST), but his expectations and meanings related to his activism differ from the expectations and meanings of other activists. In accordance with Klandermans (2004), it is possible to identify three main demands for participation in Renato's engagement trajectory: instrumentality, identity and ideology. As long as his worldview was in accordance with the movement collective identity, he identified with the MST. In addition, his participation was instrumental, because his worldview was based on the assumption that the collective action could change the social and political context.
Although Renato still admires the movement, he did not maintain contact with its activists after leaving the movement. I haven't had, for a long time, an organic 5 relationship with the movement, which is still my organization. That is (...) because my identification is with the bottom level [the grassroots of the movement] and because I still see the struggle in my everyday life and because I see the result of this struggle and I see the camps and the settlements as potential places where a different productive model and political education process are realized and I see these places [as contexts] where different political practices and personal relationships are possible.

An activism trajectory of a life-meaning seeker
While Renato was trying to find a group where he could express his communist identity, Pedro was actually looking for a place where he could give meaning to his life. In the 1980s, Pedro (male, 48 years old) was a young adult from the middleclass who had left his hometown Ipiaú, in the countryside of the northeastern state of Bahia, to study literature at a state university in Minas Gerais. He never graduated and his life took a new direction. He went back to Bahia, started to work in a bank, got married and had a child. That same decade he was divorced, left his job in the bank and decided to travel the country. By the end of his journey, he returned to Minas Gerais where he decided to study economics.
During this period, Brazil was going through a process of re-democratization in which social mobilization against the already weakened military dictatorship became stronger. Pedro began his political engagement in the National Student Union (União Nacional dos Estudantes [UNE]), which was one of most important student social movements that struggled for democracy in Brazil. Afterwards, he became involved in the Brazilian Film Society Movement (Movimento Cineclubista). 6 Pedro decided to change direction once again and left the state. He dropped his major in economics and went to Rio de Janeiro to study law. There, he got involved in the Labor Party. This political engagement influenced his subsequent professional choices. After finishing law school, he specialized in unionism. However, he had never put what he learned into practice. When he finished the specialization course, he worked many different jobs, but not as lawyer. Time passed and he grew dissatisfied with his life. He was out of work and far from his child, who lived in his hometown. Therefore, he decided to return and tried to reinvent himself.
(...) and when things didn't turn out better in my life, I realized that it was a good moment to go back to my hometown, to go back to Ipiaú. And I did it in 1999. I was penniless. I had no prospects... I didn't have work experience as a lawyer (...) I wanted to be close to my mother, my son who was already a young man...
He had lost everything he had inherited from his family. He took up residence in a hotel in Ipiaú and, to make matters worse, his old middle-class friends cut-off relations with him. But, when he met his old friend Renato in Ipiaú, his life would change again.
(...) And that was the day I ran into Renato. I'd gone back with the intention of studying for an exam to be a public employee and Renato made me change my plans, and he brought me to a community radio station. I'd promised myself that I'd never be a social activist again. I think that it's hard, right. So, I went to the radio and, suddenly, I was involved with the community radio, I was in the struggle.
When some MST activists were arrested, Renato asked him to be the movement's lawyer. Accordingly, as already mentioned, Snow and McAdam (2000) observes that recruitment is more often to happen when the individuals previously know some member of the movement.
Renato knew that I had finished law school, that I didn't have experience as lawyer but that I had the professional license (...). However, I didn't have experience... [on one occasion], rural workers were arrested. I'd never gone to a police station before and I arrived there saying that I was the lawyer for the MST and that I'd like to see the prisoners... The movement invested in the new lawyer and gave him social visibility during a period of his life in which his close social relations discredited him. Pedro's decision to join the MST can be analyzed in light of the aforementioned collective action theory (Olson 1968). According to Olson (1968) the social movements' participants try to obtain collective incentives, i.e., benefits for the society and not only for the activists, and selective incentives that are exclusively for those who participate in the social movement. In Pedro's case, the benefits of being socially visible again was a compelling selective incentive that outweighed the costs of a life of activism. Indeed, Hornsey and Hogg (2002) explain that one of the individuals' strategies to repair negative social identity is seeking to be members of a high-status group. In fact, overnight, the socially invisible Pedro became an important regional figure thanks to his participation in the MST.
Then, when the MST started the [land] occupations and the word that I was a lawyer spread, the movement recruited people from other settlements to mobilize in Ipiaú. To have a crowd [of people]. And that made a huge impact. People thought that all those people were from Ipiaú and I was there, in the middle of the crowd, 'parading', waving to the people. Suddenly, I gained notoriety that I'd never had in my life. The movement gave me social visibility and I gained an identity: the MST's lawyer. The invitations started to pop up, all the farmers wanted to invite me. 'Pedro from Ipiaú. I know him.' Pedro gained a new identity: the MST's lawyer, which can be analyzed as a social identity (see Tajfel 1978;Reicher 2004). Moreover, following the identity theory's reasoning, the new situation probably allowed him to display an identity that was previously lower in his identities hierarchy (see e.g., Stryker 2000). Kiecolt (2000) in her chapter on self-change in social movements, describes that the participation in a social movement is able to change the stable and enduring idea of self (self-concept) (see Turner 1987) and one possible way to do so is, indeed, changing the level of an identity in the hierarchy. Regarding the emotional effects of Pedro's social identity, his report corroborates the findings of Ellemers et al. (2004). The authors observed that the respect of members of the in-groupin Pedro's case the MST, his parents and the middle-class of his hometownenhance individuals' self-esteem. The same authors also point out that the respect of out-group members, such as the (non-activist) inhabitants of Pedro's hometown, can boost an individual's self-esteem, whenever it is already enhanced by the respect of the in-group's members. Furthermore, Simon et al. (2006) note that the respect of people from the in-group can increase one's willingness to engage in the group. In fact, as time went by, Pedro gained more confidence as a lawyer and started to enjoy his position inside the movement. In this vein, we can say that his participation in the MST provided to him successful experiences, which increased his sense of self-efficacy (see Turner and Killian 1987;Kiecolt 2000).
And, then, I started to realize that law is norms, technique and art. (...) [The] art is also in the speech, in the theatre, in the staging. (...) I saw the law in practice.
During his participation in the MST, Pedro was appreciated by the families of rural workers. Pedro did not, in fact, occupy land. As a lawyer for the MST, he negotiated the landless' interests with the authorities, when the landless occupied land. This made him also somewhat responsible for their lives, in particular during violent occupations and evictions.
One time, [the landless] occupied a very important farm. The day before, I went to the camp and said: 'Look, people, the eviction could happen tomorrow. I was informed by the judicial officer. (...) And you have to resist'. I said. 'If you're going to be settled, you'll have to struggle for dignity, for respect. We have more than 300.000 families throughout the Brazil.' I said this to them. (...) 'The MST's biggest point of pride is telling the world that the MST settlements don't have starving children, that all children attend school...' In this way, I started to encourage them. The following day, the police arrived. It was a violent eviction, people told me. Ten hours later, someone arrived to my house: 'Doctor Pedro! Doctor Pedro! The eviction is happening.' When I arrived, the police had already authorized the eviction. Then, I arrived and said: 'Wait! I'm the lawyer.' Later, Pedro's visibility and achievements began to anger the landowners of the region and he started to receive death threats. He was forced to move to Salvador, the capital of Bahia, where he continued to be a lawyer for the movement while getting involved also in other activities related to politics and culture.
Nevertheless, a number of factors made Pedro's participation costly.
In As Pedro was aging, the unstable and hectic life of an activist and the pressure of being responsible for other lives became more difficult to handle (see Jennings 1987). The aging may make the activism especially hard in a greedy organization (Franzway 2000;Corrigall-Brown 2006;Nepstad 2008), as the MST. That is, an organization where participation requires a great deal of time and energy. In Pedro's case, it means travelling a lot and having no other activity outside the movement. In addition, when he says that he is not a peasant, he highlights his conscience constituent role, insofar as the MST's goal accomplishments does not benefit him directly (see McCarthy and Zald 1977). Similarly to what Jasper (1998) observed, Pedro's disengagement was embedded in a mix of emotions, i.e. delusion, feelings of powerlessness, uselessness and inadequacy. Lastly, Pedro could not control his emotions in stressful situations, which corroborates the aforementioned findings of Klandermans (1997) and Nepstad (2008) that sustained participation in a social movement is less likely when the activists are not able to handle the stress generated by the participation in collective actions. While Renato was trying to find a group where he could express his congruent prominent and salient identities, his friend Pedro was actually looking for a place where he could give meaning to his life. Pedro's life is marked by the search for something that could make him feel useful, appreciated by the society and that was pleasant. We argue that Pedro is therefore not an identity-seeker, like Renato, but that he is, what we call a life-meaning seeker. Bearing in mind the already mentioned three demands for participation identified by Klandermans (2004), Pedro mainly participated for an ideology, i.e., a searching for meaning. Not all, but one of Pedro's reasons for leaving the MST were related to his main reason for joining it. In the first place, he joined the MST because he was looking for meaning at a moment of stagnation in his life. He then left the movement because his participation became meaningless or, in his own words, his participation "did not add anything [to his life]" anymore. Then, after seven years in Salvador, participating in different MST activities, in 2010, Pedro left the movement. However, he maintained contact with the activists, whom he considers close friends. In fact, he still contributes to the movement when he has time, but his contributions are not demanding and do not alter his life as a law professor at a university in Salvador. The fact that Pedro continues to have contact with the activists, yet contributes sporadically with the movement and had pursue a career formed by a social network not related to his activism supports Stryker's (2000) reasoning that the degree in which the social networks inside and outside the movement of the individuals overlap resembles the variation in their participation in the movement. Nevertheless, participating sporadically does not necessarily mean being an activist. Indeed, Pedro does not self-identify as activist. MST activist is neither one of his prominent identities nor one of his salient identities. He does not display the activist identity whenever he can and he does not want to be an activist anymore, because being an activist became meaningless to him, as he said (see Stryker and Serpe 1994;Brenner et al. 2014). Moreover, he does not consider a low-demanding contribution to the movement a participation, given that his current contribution does not fit his activist role identity (see Stets and Serpe 2013). When he left the movement, i.e., he no longer identified as a MST activist and reduced his contribution to the movement, he continued to be a conscience constituents (McCarthy and Zald 1977). However, he became a supporter, which means any individual or organization that "(…) provide money, facilities, and even labor [to a social movement]" (McCarthy andZald 1977: 1216).
Although Pedro left the MST, he still believes in the movement's cause.
In the settlements, there are no rich people, but there aren't any starving people either, there aren't any children that don't attend school. [The MST] restores people's lives. It gives citizenship to those people. They are the protagonists of their own future. The movement has a very important function. It influences society to make new changes, right. (...) The movement provides this capacity to think, to dream, to hope. Corrigall-Brown (2006) found that some individuals could go through a period of individual abeyance, during their trajectory of activism. It means that they leave a social movement for a while, but return to activism later, participating in the same or in a different organization. The same author explains that individual abeyance is possible when the individual, who previously left the movement, maintains an identity in accordance with a life of activism. This is only possible if the social movement has an individual abeyance structure as well (see also Taylor 1989). This structure consists of networks in which the individual can still share beliefs similar to his/ her previous activism life (Corrigall-Brown 2006). It is not clear if Pedro will ever join the MST again. However, his relationship with the other activists and his beliefs in accordance with the movement explain his occasional low-demanding participation as one of the movement's lawyers.

Professional career versus activism
The 35 years-old Afonso lived in the Safra settlement in the state of Pernambuco. Although we were told by others that he was still an activist, at the time of the interview he considered himself not an activist but only a settler. When Afonso's mother decided to occupy land, he was already a young adult and did not follow her. Afonso and his siblings grew up in the city. About three months after his mother began the occupation, Afonso visited her in the camp.
So, I came to visit her. When I arrived here, there was a crowd of people in tents. Something that seemed abnormal to me. I'd never seen anything like that... (...) I was from the city. I studied in town and worked part-time jobs. I worked under any conditions, but I lived in the town. I didn't know anything about the MST. I didn't know [what it was]. I didn't even know what the acronym MST meant. And, at that point, I started to visit [my mother]. I thought it [the camp] was strange. I told her, at the moment, that life in the camp was not for me.
The MST leader who organized that occupation told Afonso's mother that retirees could not become settlers. Therefore, she decided to register her son as the owner of the land. From that moment on, due to bureaucratic reasons, Afonso started to live with his mother in the settlement.
As time passed, he grew accustomed to life in the countryside and experienced increasing contact with the MST activists. He received soon the first invitation to participate in the movement. Initially, he refused because he did not feel comfortable participating in a movement that he knew so little about. Then the leaders of the movement asked him if he would like to attend the MST's technical course in cooperative management in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul. He accepted the offer and, over the next three years, he learned to be an administrator of cooperatives and an activist. When Afonso attended the MST's course, he had to go through a period of identity matching, in which the movement's collective identity needed to be perceived by Afonso as compatible with his personal identity (e.g., Downton and Wehr 1991;Gamson 1991;Nepstad 2004;Corrigall-Brown 2006). This happened through the ongoing socialization with other activists. Under these conditions, he started express the social identity of activist (Tajfel 1978;Reicher 2004). Accordingly, Kiecolt (2000) argues that the participation in a social movement may allow the creation of the identity of activist, which did not exist before in the individual's structure of identities hierarchy. Moreover, in Afonso's case the social networks inside the MST became stronger, which is pivotal for the salience of an identity (see Stryker 2000). In this vein, the frequent and close contact with the movement, caused Afonso to acquire the identity of activist in his set of identities and he could evoke it. "And from that moment on, I got used to it; I started to like the Landless Movement." When he concluded the course, the MST decided that he would coordinate the movement's production sector in the city of Escada, about 600 km away from his home. He was not happy there; he wanted to live in the region of his settlement. However, he could not go back home without the permission of the leaders of the movement. The lack of autonomy about where he would live upset him to the point that he was willing to confront the other activists to assert his interests. His fortune changed when, after a year in Escada, the regional coordinator of the settlement in Pernambuco left his position and the movement invited Afonso to be the new coordinator.
As time passed, other issues related to activism in the MST began to bother him as well. Although he was an activist struggling for land redistribution, he realized that, ironically, this left him little time to farm his own land. In fact, Knoke (1981), studying commitment and detachment in voluntary associations, noticed that the more difficult the communication within the association and the lower the individuals' influence on the associations' decision-making are, the higher the chances become that the individuals leave. The individuals have to feel that they are able to self-regulate their participation in order to remain in the association. A number of circumstances made Afonso's participation even more costly.
One thing that I observed: all my life I had been an activist, but I always worked my land too... [I worked] in agriculture, producing normally, making my land produce. It's always the same old story: many activists are part of the movement, but they forget to produce. In this way, it's common for us [activists], when we arrive in a settlement, to hear a settler saying: 'You're not producing. You're this... you're that...' However, when you work hands-on, it's difficult [for a settler to criticize the activists]. Today, I don't know, because I'm not in the movement, but in my time, there wasn't [remuneration for the activists]. There was voluntary work and there were allowances, but it was rare. (...) Actually, those who participated had, mainly, the support of their family (...). It was with this income that we lived on. In my case, when my mother was alive and I wasn't married, she helped me. I got married and my wife became a teacher [working for the municipality] and she was responsible for paying the bills. When I produced something, from agriculture, we pooled our resources and carried on.
Activism in the MST is time-consuming. The greediness of the MST prevented Afonso from making time to engage in and enjoy a personal life outside the movement. Accordingly, White (2010) observes that when an activist is confronted with situations in his life that are not compatible among them and that require the performance of not compatible identities as well, the individual may be compelled to decide which identity to act out, which implies leaving or continuing in the movement. Moreover, he could not have a job outside of the movement. His only source of income came from his family. The lack of financial resources also prevented him from fulfilling his dream of studying something unrelated to his activism. Nepstad (2008) observed, in the study of the commitment of the Plowshares Movement's activists, that an activist is more likely to be committed to a social movement, if the movement's social networks are able to provide support, e.g., material support, which is the opposite of what happened to Afonso. In order to have the time and financial conditions to fulfill his dream, he decided to quit his activism in the MST. Although Afonso decided to leave the movement, he remembers his life as an activist as gratifying.
When you're an activist, satisfaction is seeing things happen. It's seeing a project being put into practice. (...) So, it's gratifying. Gratifying in the sense of seeing an occupation with 100, 200, 300, 400 families. It's really good to see. However, his life left no room for the demanding activism in the MST. He was no longer biographically available. Biographical availability means not being bothered by "… personal constraints that may increase the costs and risks of movement participation, such as full-time employment, marriage, and family responsibilities" (McAdam 1986, 70).
Sometimes, you want to participate, but your world is already different. For example, let's say that [the MST] will occupy land next Thursday, I can't go, because I can't miss my class at the college. I can't go, because on Thursday, Friday and Saturday I don't work on my land [and go to college], I have to take Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday to farm my land.
As a result, he no longer identified himself as a MST activist. Although the other MST activists still considered him one of them and had indicated him to be interviewed as their representative, Afonso rejects this social identity (see Tajfel 1978). In fact, as explained in the previous case of Pedro, social identities can be imposed. An individual can be categorized by society as being part of a group, even though he/she does not self-identify with this group (Morris 1992).
That is why I say I defend [the movement], but I can't say that I'm an activist in the Landless Movement. Today, I won't say that. (...) No way. I don't see myself as an activist. An activist, to me, is a person that's at headquarters, who's making things happening. I see myself as a MST sympathizer. And you can find MST sympathizer anywhere.
Nevertheless, the fact that Afonso did not identify as an activist does not mean that he did not identify with the movement. Although, he does not agree with some activists' attitudes.
If you ask me, for example: 'Do you defend the MST?' I defend the Landless Movement everywhere. I'm not ashamed to say that I'm part of the Landless Movement. I consider myself to be part of the movement. Today there's no longer that kind [of motivation]. There aren't people who are willing to participate [in occupations], to resist. There aren't. People participate only when it's mentioned that they'll earn money. Having money, people participate, for their own benefit. 'I only go if there's something in it for me.' Much like Renato, Afonso separates the movement's collective identity from the MST activists' personal identities, that is, he distinguishes the beliefs of the MST as an organization from the strategies that some activists use on behalf of the movement. Actually, Afonso and some MST activists, who he criticizes, have different demands for participation. Accordingly, van Stekelenburg et al. (2009) identify two main motives for which the individuals participate in a social movement: instrumental and ideology. The individuals motivated by instrumental reasons participate in order to improve/change their situation, while those who participate due to ideology reasons do it, roughly, in order to express their values (van Stekelenburg et al. 2009). In this vein, Afonso was motivated by ideology while for many others activists their participation is instrumental.
Even though Afonso could not reconcile participation with his responsibilities and activities outside the movement, he did not rule out the possibility of joining the MST again in the future. However, he would like to return to the movement only under the condition that he could do something related to his new skills. Afonso's willingness to participate in the movement again can be understood as a possible individual abeyance trajectory (Corrigall-Brown 2006). In fact, similar to what Corrigall-Brown (2006) states as condition for the individual abeyance, Afonso maintains an identity in accordance with a life as activist. He appreciated the activism's life and the MST as an organization. Moreover, he still lived in the MST settlement, which facilitates the permanence of his abeyance structure. That is, the networks in which he could still share with other activists beliefs similar to his previous activism life (see Taylor 1989;Corrigall-Brown 2006). This abeyance structure helped to keep Afonso's flame of activism alive. Nevertheless, Afonso emphasized that he would only participate in the MST again, if certain new conditions could be met. His life had changed during the time he spent outside the movement and, as a result, he had acquired new interests. Similarly, Passy and Giugni (2000) noted, in their study about life-sphere, networks and sustained participation in social movements, that when the activists' social networks become less related to the movement, the former activist's interest become less compatible with participation. This can be explained by the fact that, as he continues to maintain social relations with other individuals that resemble the activist identity (in this case, the other activists in the MST, his family, friends and neighbors), his activist (role) identity is still salient and will be often evoked (see Stryker 2000;Stryker and Serpe 1994). Indeed, Stryker and Serpe (1994) state that an individual will try, consciously or not, to express his salient identity whenever it is possible in different situations. Afonso's new conditions to reinitiate his participation in the MST can be understood as an attempt to adapt his new interests, discovered in his socialization outside the movement, to his future possible life of activism.
Finally, Afonso's reason for joining the movement was related to his gradual identification with the movement, while his reasons for leaving had to do with a series of personal issues that were undermining his engagement with the MST. He did not quit due to identity incompatibility.

Personal life versus activism
Simone was 37 years old at the time of the interview, but she joined the movement when she was 11. She lived with her parents and her 8eight-year-old brother in the city of Nonoai, in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul.
Therefore, in 1987 the family decided to occupy land with the MST activists. Life in the occupation was not easy. For four years, Simone's family had to move from camp to camp in different regions of the state. During their childhood, Simone and her brother were evicted from a camp and witnessed the imprisonment of many activists. In these conflicts, the family lost all their belongings. In this meantime, Simone became an activist of the MST.
I started to participate when I was 12 years old, when we went to the camp. From this moment on, I was part of the movement, because we had the group of the young people and I participated by coordinating this group. From that moment on, I started to be part [of the movement]. Rodgers (2005) states that children become active participants when they struggle for specific causes, follow age-appropriate strategies and identify as members of the movement. Activities specifically for children, like those promoted by the MST, encourage their active participation and autonomy (see Rodgers 2005).
After participating in many occupations, the family received a plot of land in a location that was unsuitable for farming. Thus, Simone's father decided to move to another settlement, which had fertile land, but where people did not want to live because it was very far away from urban centers. They were able to produce, however in the absence of a large market in close proximity, it was hard to sell their products and the family moved to another settlement four years later where they stayed ever since Simone spent the end of her childhood and adolescence in the communities of the movement. When she and her brother became adults, they received their own plots of land in the same settlement. Given that, Simone spent 27 years of her life living in the MST communities and at least 20 years actively participating in the movement, she considers the movement to be more than an organization, it is her family.
For me, the MST is like my family. [It is] where I was born 7 and raised and today... Sometimes, I wonder what I would be without the MST. Because, really, we are a family. We have a daily relationship, experiences inside the settlement, in the city, in the state. So, we're a big family and we go forward. I don't think about giving up. This is my will.
In Simone's case, favorable socialization (McAdam and Paulsen 1993;Snow and McAdam 2000;Passy and Giugni 2000) began during her childhood and continued during her adolescence. Both childhood and adolescence have particular implications for the individual's cognitive construction of the world, as stated by E. Erikson and Erikson (1998). According to Erik Erikson's stages of psychological development (Erikson and Erikson 1998), in the last stage of childhood (between the ages of 5 and 12), the children have a greater chance of being aware of their existence as individuals. They gain a better understanding of the effects that their actions have on their environment. As a result, they become more responsible and have a particular interest in developing skills in order to better control the effects of their actions on the world. In this stage, children also develop their moral values and are able to classify cultures and individuals as being part of different groups/contexts. E. Erikson and Erikson (1998) point out that adolescence (between the ages of 13 and 19) is the period in which individuals often question who they are and what they can be in their context. This is why the authors consider adolescence to be a period of identity consolidation. Individuals become increasingly worried about what people think of them and try to find a way to be included in society. To do so, they can affiliate with groups that provide experiences that reassemble this identity in formation. The authors observe that this is a period of identity crises in which individuals forge an identity based around their childhood but, likewise, this identity has to fit within what society considers an adult identity. Thus, adolescence is an identity transition between the individuals' childhood and their adulthood in a specific society.
Moreover, as Downton and Wehr (1998) observe, the sharing of beliefs by people close to an individual is an everyday experience that begins in childhood. This process is very suitable and, as time passes, the individual internalizes these beliefs. The same authors argue that these beliefs tend to be perceived as the 'truths' on which our convictions are based. In the same vein, some studies have revealed that activists' children have a greater chance of being activists in the future (e.g., Jennings 2002;Duncan and Stewart 1995). Similarly, as Simone's favorable and early socialization with other activists, including her own parents, began during a period of her life crucial to identity formation (childhood and adolescence), it is plausible that she never thought about quitting definitively.
As time passed, she got more involved in the movement's activities. Nevertheless, her participation in the movement got be interrupted.
So, I got married, I had children. And I focused more on my family. (...) I stayed at home more, but I never left the movement.
Simone's report reveals that she was not biographic available for a while (see McAdam 1986). However, Corrigall-Brown (2012) argues that biographical availability is an important precondition for the recruitment of new members, but it is not particularly relevant to the permanence of the activists in a movement. In this vein, Simone's biographical unavailability contradicts the aforementioned findings of Corrigall-Brown (2012) and highlights the gender issues in the Brazilian countryside. Rural women have supporting roles (e.g., Paulilo 2009;Schwendler 2009) that revolve around household work and childcare. The men hold primary accountability for the family's income even when their wives perform additional paid labor. Thus, women's work is still undervalued, even though many women have a double workload: working a regular job and at home. Therefore, Simone's biographical unavailability was a situation that prevented her from displaying her activist identity. Despite this being a prominent identity, the imposed social identity of mother and homemaker were more salient. This means that she was compelled, due to the current context, to rearrange her identities in the hierarchy to include her new identities (see Kiecolt 2000;White 2010 When her three children grew older, Simone became biographical available again. At this point, her identity of activist may become salient again, as pointed out by Kiecolt (2000).
It has been four years since I joined the administration of the movement. (...) And four years ago I started [to participate] once again and, since then, I've been part of the movement's administration in the region. I work with gender issues. This is my task.
Having experienced first-hand the difficulty of being a female activist, she coordinated the sector of the movement dedicated to elaborating strategies to increase the inclusion of women and became more aware of the challenging gender issues within the movement. Simone mentioned that the women have gained more leverage in the movement. However, just a few years after re-joining the movement, Simone witnessed the en masse departure of thirteen female activists who were disappointed with their lack of inclusion in the movement's decision-making process: "[W]e [female activists] participated [in the activities], but we didn't plan them, right." This event reveals once more that the role of the women in the countryside has another implication: they still have fewer opportunities to contribute to the decision-making process of the organizations (see e.g., Paulilo 2009) and it corroborates the already mentioned study of Knoke (1981). This study showed that the more difficult the communication within the association and the lower the individuals' influence on the associations' decision-making are, the higher the chances of the individuals leave the organization. In the same vein, many authors have also noted that negative experiences involving interactions with others activists are a common reason for disengagement (van der Veen and Klandermans 1989;Klandermans 1997;Corrigall-Brown 2006). In addition, Sandell (1999) discovered that changes in the composition of the members that form the social networks inside the movement have an impact on their participation. The author concludes that the activists' chances of leaving a movement increase after relevant others drop out. Nevertheless, although Simone was upset about the disengagement of the women, she followed a different path and later she reorganized the sector with new members.
Then, although she perceived the environment as being not always favorable to the women's participation, she did not consider stopping her participation again.
Interviewer: Have you ever thought about leaving the movement? Either during the period of the occupations, in the period when you encountered problems related to gender issues or when many activists left the movement? Simone: I think that we have to face problems with our heads held high, right? Because if you run away from the problems, it won't work. I think that, when I have a problem, I have to face it in order to solve it. Because if I run away from it, I'll be a coward, right. Simone reveals an ability to self-motivate and persist in the face of difficulties. Mannarini and Talò (2011) found that the longer the individuals' participation the lesser they perceive it as stressful. Additionally, the authors observed that effective coping strategies and social support are pivotal to the activists' dealing with the stress of their activism trajectory. Indeed, Simone reported that the MST is not completely hostile to female participation.
If I need to go out, my neighbor will take care of my children. So, in our lives, we're closer to one another.
Accordingly, as previous studies (Downton and Wehr 1998;Passy and Giugni 2000;Nepstad 2004Nepstad , 2008Corrigall-Brown 2006;Mannarini and Fedi 2011) have shown that, the social support, that Simone receives and gives to other women who participate in the MST, facilitates their collective activism and increases the chances of sustained participation. Social support is a feature of some organizational social networks that makes people's lives easier (see Putnam 1995). Indeed, Oberschall (1973) had already highlighted that the solidarity is a relevant factor, which increases the consensus among the members. The author argued that the social movements had an active role in the promotion of the solidarity as well as the mobilization as a whole, creating favorable conditions for the participation. Moreover, studies have also shown that activists with more participation time are more skillful in asking for help and are, in fact, those who more often receive social support from other members, as well as from people outside of the movement (Downton and Wehr 1998;Passy and Giugni 2000;Nepstad 2004Nepstad , 2008Corrigall-Brown 2006). Therefore, is not only a characteristic of the activists' social networks but the experienced activists themselves are also able to stimulated it.
Finally, regardless of the difficulties that Simone has to face to continue participating in the movement, she does not intend to quit the movement again. As she stated: "Look, I plan to be in the movement as long as I can stand on my feet." Simone's trajectory is effectively an example of the aforementioned individual abeyance (Corrigall-Brown 2006). She stopped participating for a long period, but re-joined the movement at a later point. It was possible, because, she still had contact with members of the movement, which helped to maintain an identity in accordance with the life of activist. In her case, this contact was often, given that she lived, and still lives, in the movement's community. This community worked as individual abeyance structure (Taylor 1989;Corrigall-Brown 2006).
Moreover, Simone's abeyance is also in accordance with the findings of Nepstad (2008) about the plausible structures, i.e. a place where even the activists' improbable beliefs could be legitimated and ensured by the others activists (confirmatory others). These structures are a demonstration of the impact of political socialization in tight-knit communities such as those of the MST. Similarly, Snow and McAdam (2000) observe that in contexts formed by people who already have many things in common (e.g., lifestyle, background, etc.), so-called solidarity networks, the people are more likely to share a common identity. Furthermore, the social networks with other individuals who are in accordance with the activist identity enhance the chances of this identity being salient (Stryker 2000). In this vein, Simone, who was raised in MST community, had and has social networks that are composed of fewer ties, which form her social bonds. These ties mainly overlap: many members of her family, her friends and the MST activists are the same. Therefore, the movement's structure may be even more plausible to her, given that a substantial part of Simone's ties plays the role of confirmatory others.
During Simone's trajectory of activism, her identity structure was in constant rearrangement in order to respond to the new situations imposed by life. Although being an activist was always prominent, her life's circumstances prevented her activist identity to be salient (see e.g., Stryker and Serpe 1994). Indeed, White (2010) observes that the complexity of life outside the movement may reinforce conflict with or have no effect in the individuals' participation. Moreover, the life inside the movement, that is, the individuals' participation is equally complex and fluid and encompasses different arrangements among participation, abeyance, re-engagement, change of organization and disengagement.
Yet, Simone's participation has supplied different demands over the years. In the beginning, her family started to participate in the MST out of necessity, which correspond more to the material goals pointed out by Downton and Wehr (1998) and the instrumental demand identified by van Stekelenburg et al. (2009). As time passed, she had the close and regular social interactions with other activists and she continued to participate due to ideological, identity and instrumental reasons (see van Stekelenburg et al. 2009;Klandermans 2004;Downton and Wehr 1998). Therefore, she started to participate having instrumental goals, however she re-joined the movement and continued in it in order to achieve her ideological goals.

Discussion and conclusion: comparing trajectories of disengagement
The cases considered in the previous section show that the trajectories from participation to disengagement follow very different paths. These trajectories are strongly linked to individual characteristics and previous experiences (inside or outside the movement). However, it is possible to find common denominators that aid one's understanding of disengagement, while pointing towards the need for further study.
The trajectories of participation of Renato, Pedro, Afonso and Simone show how a variety of factors can influence an activist's disengagement and the complexity of the decision-making behind this process. As supported by previous studies, we demonstrate how disengagement can be the result of a number of factors that depend on personal and social characteristics, which make each instance of disengagement unique (see e.g., Klandermans 1997;Downton and Wehr 1998;Corrigall-Brown 2006;van der Veen and Klandermans 1989;Gamson 1991). In all four cases, the activists' participation became more costly than gratifying after a certain point. However, what constitutes gratifying or costly participation clearly varies from person to person and is therefore an individual-level evaluation. These findings are in accordance with the assumption of Klandermans (2004) that the activists' disengagement is a result of a perception of insufficient gratification.
Renato and Pedro's cases show how individuals leave a movement when it no longer supplies the demands that made them join the organization. Conversely, Afonso and Simone's cases revealed how the individual's demands can change during the process of participation and, as a result, their reasons for leaving are different from the reasons that made them join the movement. Therefore, both assumptions that recruitment and disengagement are two sides of the same coin and that they are different phenomena are applicable. Indeed, Klandermans (2004) observes that the individuals' cost/benefit evaluation is part of the entire process of participation (recruitment, participation and disengagement) rather than a phenomenon exclusive for the disengagement process. As the individuals' initial demands may or may not change during their participation, their reasons for leaving may or may not be related to their initial demands as well. More specifically, the findings revealed that there may be a discordance between the movement's collective identity and the activists' identities. This discordance as well as new biographical barriers may be both reasons for leaving a movement.
Furthermore, the way in which the former activists deal with their emotions and how they cope with their stress, while they pursue a professional career and perform gender-imposed roles were pivotal in their decisions. Therefore, studies on disengagement must also take into consideration the individuals' recruitment and participation. To understand the disengagement process, it is pivotal to investigate if, why and how the individuals' demands change throughout their participation.
Especially noteworthy is the fact that Pedro, Afonso and Simone already had close contact with other MST activists before joining the movement and all kept in contact with the movement. Pedro even continued to give support to the MST, whenever it is not demanding. Furthermore, Afonso and Simone still lived in the movement's communities. This circumstance has a relevant role in Afonso's intention to re-join the movement and in Simone's decision to do so. Ultimately, the last two cases evidence the prominent role of social networks related to the movement in the former activist decision to reengage in the movement, as was shown already in previous by Corrigall-Brown (2006). The participation of individuals with distinct backgrounds, needs and goals shows that the MST is a social movement that embraces many causes. In this way, this movement is able to supply a variety of demands, at least temporarily. It can be a good option for someone who seeks a place to express communist ideology, it can supply an individual's need for a meaningful life, it can help someone improve his/her life conditions and it can provide a strong social network that the activists can count on, much like a family. Accordingly, van Stekelenburg, Klandermans and van Dijk (2009) argue that social movements emphasize the aspects of the government's polices with the aim of motivating the individuals to participate due to instrumental or ideological motives. In addition, the MST is able to mobilize children, which is another characteristic/strategy that enhances its chance of long-lasting mobilization, as pointed out DeMartini (1990). The author says that some social movements intentionally try to convert the activists' children to active participants, guaranteeing intergenerational political participation with the hope of surviving over time. Indeed, although the activists' sustained participation does not depend only on the organizational networks, previous studies have shown that social movements have the important and difficult task of sustaining their activists' participation in order to survive (see Downton and Wehr 1991). After the individuals start to participate, the movements have to promote strategies that encourage social support and strengthen the activists' social interactions, the bond between their identities as well as the movement's collective identities. In this vein, the MST is emblematic insofar its multifaceted character enables it to supply a number of demands of its activists, which contributes to their permanence in the movement. Even though the individuals leave the movement, they remain as sympathizers, in abeyance or participate occasionally in low-demanding activities (see e.g., Oegema and Klandermans 1994;Taylor 1989).
Besides the contribution to the knowledge of the phenomenon of the activists' disengagement, the four individuals' trajectories from the recruitment to disengagement highlight the point that needs more attention in future studies: the importance of understanding the whole trajectory of participation, not only the disengagement itself, to comprehend this later (for example of similar study design, see Passy and Giugni 2000). Disengagement is part of a process that cannot be dissociated from recruitment and participation, as our findings demonstrate. Each part of this recruitment-participation-disengagement process gives us hints on what the next steps will be. However, there is still much room for the unpredictable. The whole process happens during the individuals' daily lives, formed by social networks composed by multiple ties, even though they dedicate a great amount of their time and effort participating in the movement. Hence, we believe that additional qualitative studies on disengagement, which leave room for emergence of the unpredictable aspects, are required.