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This paper is devoted to the study of the main representative body of educators of the Youth Judicial Protection Service (Protection judiciaire de la jeunesse, PJJ): the National Union of PJJ Employees (SNPES). The professional identity of PJJ educators is characterized by a fundamental ambivalence: while they are formally employees of the Ministry of Justice, their majority union is an affiliated member of the main federation of unions of the Ministry of Education. From a socio-historical perspective, we analyze strategic hesitations of the SNPES, caught in a tension between two logics of collective action: a logic of utility, attentive to the materiel interests of its educators, and a logic of identity, attentive to the political meaning of their mandate, rooted in the historical memory of its belonging institution. By doing so, we question the links between union activity and professional identity, while shedding some light on the reconfigurations of an emblematic professional group of the French juvenile justice system.