Abstract
This chapter introduces the key ideas, literature and theories of belonging across the social sciences, as well as in education. It describes the different ways the concept of belonging is understood, enacted, experienced and its effects on individuals, social groups, solidarities and collectivities and wider society. It provides a summary of the thinking and research on belonging by influential and seminal scholars, including Yuval-Davis, Antonisch, Wright, Colhoun, Amin, Youkhana, Ahmed and Baumeister and Leary. It identifies the similarities and differences in their perspectives and across their different social science disciplines. Summaries of each chapter in the collection are provided. In brief, this chapter reinforces the complexity of belonging as a theory, practice and mode of being and its contemporary salience for young people and education.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Ahmed, S. (2004). Collective feelings: Or, the impressions left by others. Theory, Culture & Society, 21, 25–42.
Ahmed, S. (2012). On being included: Racism and diversity in institutional life. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Allen, L. (2011). Picture this: Using photo-methods in research on sexualities and schooling. Qualitative Research, 11(5), 487–504.
Allen, L. (2013). Sexual assemblages: Mobile phones/young people/school. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 36(1), 1–13.
Amin, A. (2012). Land of Strangers. Cambridge: Polity.
Anthias, F. (2006). Belongings in a globalising and unequal world: Rethinking translocations. In N. Yuval-Davis, K. Kannabiran, & U. Vieten (Eds.), The situated politics of belonging (pp. 17–32). London: Sage.
Antonsich, M. (2010). Searching for belonging – An analytic framework. Geography Compass, 4(6), 644–659.
Arnot, M., & Swartz, S. (2012). Youth citizenship and the politics of belonging: Introducing contexts, voices, imaginaries. Comparative Education, 48(1), 1–10.
Arnot, M., Pinson, H., & Candappa, M. (2009). Compassion, caring and justice: Teachers’ strategies to maintain moral integrity in the face of national hostility to the “non-citizen”. Educational Review, 61(3), 249–264.
Bauer, S., Loomis, C., & Akkari, A. (2012). Intercultural immigrant youth identities in contexts of family, friends, and school. Journal of Youth Studies, 16(1), 54–69.
Baumeister, R., & Leary, M. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117(3), 497–529.
Beck, U. (2003). The analysis of global inequality: From national to cosmopolitan perspective. In M. Kaldor, H. Anheier, & M. Glasius (Eds.), Global civil society (pp. 45–55). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Beck, M., & Malley, J. (1998). A pedagogy of belonging. Reclaiming Children and Youth, 7(3), 133–137.
Berlant, L. (2011). Cruel optimism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Bernat, D., & Resnick, M. (2009). Connectedness in the lives of adolescents. In R. Diclemente & R. Crosby (Eds.), Adolescent health understanding and preventing risk behaviors (pp. 375–389). San Fran, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Billig, M. (1976). Social psychology and intergroup relations. New York: Academic Press.
Börner, S. (2013). Belonging, solidarity and expansion in social policy. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.
Bromley, R. (2000). Narratives for a new belonging. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Calhoun, C. (2003). Belonging in the cosmopolitan imaginary. Ethnicities, 3(4), 531–568.
Carson, T. R. (2006). The lonely citizen: Democracy, curriculum and the crisis of belonging. In G. H. Richardson & D. W. Blades (Eds.), Troubling the canon of citzenship education (pp. 25–30). New York: Peter Lang.
Cemalcilar, Z. (2010). Schools as socialisation contexts: Understanding the impact of school climate factors on students’ sense of school belonging. Applied Psychology, 59(2), 243–272.
Certeau, M. D. (1980). Kunst des Handelns. Berlin, Germany: Merve Verlag.
Cervantes-Carson, A., & Rumens, N. (Eds.). (2007). Sexual politics of desire and belonging. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi.
Cooper, D. (2004). Challenging diversity: Rethinking equality and the value of difference. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Crowley, J. (1999). The politics of belonging: Some theoretical considerations. In A. Geddes & A. Favell (Eds.), The politics of belonging: Migrants and minorities in contemporary Europe (pp. 15–41). Aldershot: Ashgate.
Davis, K. (2008). Intersectionality as buzzword: A sociology of science perspective on what makes a feminist theory successful. Feminist Theory, 9(1), 67–85.
Day, A. (2011). Believing in belonging: Belief and social identity in the modern world. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
Fail, F., Thompson, J., & Walker, G. (2004). Belonging, identity and third culture kids: Life histories of former international school students. Journal of Research in International Education, 3(3), 319–338.
Fortier, A.-M. (2000). Migrant belongings: Memory, space, identities. Oxford: Berg.
Furrer, C., & Skinner, E. (2003). Sense of relatedness as a factor in children’s academic engagement and performance. Journal of Educational Psychology, 95(1), 148–162.
Garbutt, R. (2011). The locals: Identity, place and belonging in Australia and beyond. Oxford and New York: Peter Lang.
Gibson, M., Bejínez, L., Hidalgo, N., & Rolón, C. (2004). Belonging and school participation: Lessons from a migrant student club. In M. Gibson, P. Gándara, & J. Koyama (Eds.), School connections: U.S. Mexican youth, peers, and school achievement (pp. 129–149). New York: Teachers College Press.
Gill, J., & Howard, S. (2009). Knowing our place: Children talking about power, identity and citizenship. Camberwell, VIC: ACER Press.
Goodenow, C. (1993). The psychological sense of school membership among adolescents: Scale development and educational correlates. Psychology in the Schools, 30, 70–90.
Gregoriou, Z. (2013). Traversing new theoretical frames for intercultural education: Gender, intersectionality, performativity. International Education Studies, 6(3), 179–191.
Hall, S. (2012). City, street and citizen: The measure of the ordinary. London: Routledge.
Halse, C. (2006). Writing/reading a life: The rhetorical practice of autobiography. Auto/Biography, 14(2), 95–115.
Hayes, D., & Skattebol, J. (2015). Education and the politics of belonging: Attachments and actions. In J. Wyn & H. Cahill (Eds.), Handbook of children and youth studies (pp. 518–527). Netherlands: Springer.
Ho, E. (2009). Constituting citizenship through the emotions: Singaporean transmigrants in London. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 99, 788–804.
Joas, H. (1994). Situation—Corporeality—Sociality: The fundamentals of a theory of creativity of action. In H. Joas (Ed.), The creativity of action (pp. 145–195). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lefebvre, H. (1991). The production of space. (D. Nicholson-Smith, Trans.) Oxford: Blackwell.
Lefebvre, H. (2006). Die Produktion des Raums. In J. Dünne & S. Günzel (Eds.), Raumtheorie. Grundla-gentexte aus Philosophie und Kulturwissenschaften (pp. 330–342). Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Suhr-kamp Taschenbuch Verlag.
Lewin, K. (1948). Resolving social conflicts: Selected papers and group dynamics. New York: Harper & Row.
Maher, M. (2014). Asylum seeker and refugee children belonging, being and becoming: The early childhood educator’s role. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, 39(1), 22–29.
Martin, D. C. (1995). The choices of identity. Social Identities, 1(1), 5–16.
Massey, D. (1992). Politics and space/time. New Left Review, 196, 65–84.
Massey, D. (2005). For space. London: Sage.
Matthews, J. (2008). Schooling and settlement: Refugee education in Australia. International Studies in Sociology of Education, 18(1), 31–45.
McCall, L. (2005). The complexity of intersectionality. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 30(3), 1771–1800.
Mee, K., & Wright, S. (2009). Geographies of belonging. Environment and Planning A, 41(4), 772–779.
Ng, H. Y., & Kennedy, K. (in press). Citizenship status and identity of ethnic minorities: Cases of Hong Kong Filipino youth. In J. Gube & F. Gao (Eds.), Education, ethnicity and equity in the multilingual Asian context. Singapore: Springer.
Ong, A. (1996). Cultural citizenship as subject-making: Immigrants negotiate racial and cultural boundaries in the United States. Current Anthropology, 37(5), 737–762.
Osterman, K. (2000). Students’ need for belonging in the school community. Review of Educational Research, 70(3), 323–367.
Pfaff-Czarnecka, J. (2011). From ‘identity’ to ‘belong-ing’ in social research: Plurality, social boundaries, and the politics of the self. In S. Albiez, N. Castro, L. Jüssen, & E. Youkhana (Eds.), Ethnicity, citizenship and belonging: Practices, theory and spatial dimensions (pp. 197–218). Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and Madrid, Spain: Iberoamericana, Vervuert.
Pinson, H., Arnot, M., & Candappa, M. (2010). Education, asylum and the non-citizen child: The politics of compassion and belonging. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Probyn, E. (1996). Outside belongings. New York and London: Routledge.
Resnick, M., Bearman, P. S., Blomberg, R. W., Bauman, K. D., Harris, K. M., Jones, J., Tabor, J., Bowring, T., Sitting, R. A., Shrew, M., Ireland, M., Behringer, L. H., & Andrew, J. R. (1997). Protecting adolescents from harm. JAMA, 278(10), 823–832.
Robinson, K., Bansel, P., Denson, N., Davies, C., & Ovendone, G. (2013). Growing up queer: Issues facing young Australians who are gender variant and sexually diverse. Retrieved June 19, 2017, from http://www.glhv.org.au/files/Growing_Up_Queer2014.pdf.
Savage, M., Longhurst, B., & Bagnall, G. (2005). Globalization and belonging. London: Sage.
Singh, S., & Babacan, A. (2010). Migration, belonging and the nation state. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Soja, E. W. (1996). Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and other real-and-imagined places. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
Steiner, N., Mason, R., & Hayes, A. (Eds.). (2013). Migration and insecurity: Citizenship and social inclusion in a transnational era. London: Routledge.
Tajfel, H. (1982). Social psychology of intergroup relations. Annual Review of Psychology, 33, 1–39.
Taylor, A. (2009). Belonging. In R. Kitchin & N. Thrift (Eds.), International encyclopedia of human geography (pp. 294–299). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Walsh, K. (2006). ‘Dad says I’m tied to a shooting star!’ Grounding (research on) British expatriate belonging. AREA, 38(3), 268–278.
Walton, G. M., & Carr, P. B. (2012). Social belonging and the motivation and intellectual achievement of negatively stereotyped students. In M. Inzlicht & T. Schmader (Eds.), Stereotype threat: Theory, process and application (pp. 89–106). New York: Oxford University Press.
Weldon. (2006). The institutional context of tolerance for ethnic minorities: A comparative, multilevel analysis of Western Europe. American Journal of Political Science, 50(2), 331–349.
Westwood, S., & Phizacklea, A. (2000). Trans-nationalism and the politics of belonging. London: Routledge.
White, R. D., & Wyn, J. (2013). Youth and society (3rd ed.). South Melbourne, VIC: Oxford University Press.
Wright, S. (2015). More-than-human, emergent belongings: A weak theory approach. Progress in Human Geography, 39(4), 391–411.
Youdell, D. (2005). Sex-gender-sexuality: How sex, gender and sexuality constellations are constituted in secondary schools. Gender and Education, 17(3), 249–270.
Youdell, D. (2010). School trouble: Identity, power and politics in education. London: Routledge.
Youkhana, E. (2015). A conceptual shift in studies of belonging and the politics of belonging. Social Inclusion, 3(4), 10–24.
Yuval-Davis, N. (2004). Borders, boundaries and the politics of belonging. In S. May, T. Modood, & J. Squires (Eds.), Ethnicity, nationalism and minority rights (pp. 214–230). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Yuval-Davis, N. (2006a). Belonging and the politics of belonging. Patterns of Prejudice, 40(3), 197–214.
Yuval-Davis, N. (2006b). Intersectionality and feminist politics. European Journal of Women’s Studies, 13(3), 193–209.
Yuval-Davis, N. (2007). Intersectionality, citizenship and contemporary politics of belonging. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 10(4), 561–574.
Yuval-Davis, N. (2010). Theorizing identity: Beyond the ‘Self’ and ‘Other’ dichotomy. Patterns of Prejudice, 44, 261–280.
Yuval-Davis, N. (2011). The politics of belonging: Intersectional contestations. London: Sage.
Yuval-Davis, N., Kannabiran, K., & Vieten, U. (Eds.). (2006). The situated politics of belonging. London: Sage.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Halse, C. (2018). Theories and Theorising of Belonging. In: Halse, C. (eds) Interrogating Belonging for Young People in Schools. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75217-4_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75217-4_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-75216-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-75217-4
eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)