The consociational model (Lijphart 1977) is the most employed to manage plural societies and, in its corporate variant, it regulates political representation and participation by accommodating the interests of groups identified according to ascriptive criteria (McCulloch 2014). By so doing, it however marginalizes and even excludes all those bearers of identities not foreseen, and thus non-aligned, with the system. Generally regrouped under the catch-all label ‘Others’, these individuals are thus confronted with the choice of either adapting to the ethnic divide or remain left out. This contribution explores when and how, moved by what interests and producing what consequences, citizens bearers of non-exclusive identities perform an ‘identity choice’ aligning with a politico-institutional system pressuring them to pick a side; and it does so by looking at South Tyrol and Bosnia Herzegovina. The paper explores the institutional and political set-up of both consociations, paying particular attention to representation mechanisms and modalities of resources’ allocation. It then goes deeper into the category ‘Others’, exploring its growing heterogeneity also in the light of migration processes, and the multi-layered concept of ‘belonging’. Finally, it investigates interests, opportunities and constrains to be faced when, and if, making an ‘identity choice’. The article claims that, at the net of structural differences, these citizens are prone to instrumentally mobilize, and thus align with, the collective identity better paying off among those on offer, and beyond issues of politico-institutional representation and participation. While further studies on the topic - in and beyond consociational settings - are needed, the article reflects on how, why and to what extent opportunistic political behaviours reflected in the self-interested mobilization of exclusive collective identities lay coherence to (ethnically) divided systems, legitimize identity politics, incentivize the electoral support for nationalist parties and, in the more extreme cases, allow phenomena such as ethno-clientelism and state-capture.
