Concept: Belonging

Definition: the need to be an accepted member of a group

Related Terms: attachment; closeness; familiarity; insider

Description: An abstract and affective term, belonging has acquired powerful resonance in the contemporary world. As societies, willingly or unwillingly, absorb new immigrants, especially those with markedly different racial or ethnic composition, cultural background, or religious beliefs, questions of belonging continue to surface. Sometimes atavistic tendencies are unleashed, and mass expulsions may result. In 1972, the President of Uganda, Idi Amin, ordered the South Asian minority in this country to leave within 90 days. Less extreme measures are often in play as societies and their legislators determine who belongs and who does not, shaping immigration laws accordingly.

Not surprisingly, belonging is a pervasive theme in art, music, media, and performance. There are three different ways in which ‘belonging’ is linked expressively to migration: (1) through migrants’ dreams of home or the place from which they have moved; (2) through the perception of the settled inhabitants of a country for whom newer arrivals are those who do not belong; and (3) through what the anthropologist Benedict Anderson has called ‘elective belonging,’ an act of choice made by a person who opts for a particular social or national community. Artist Ana Mendieta who was born in Havana, Cuba and moved to the U.S. at age twelve embodied through her art a sense of loss and impermanence. But belonging can be as much about gain as about loss. In a documentary of elderly people who immigrated to Argentina as children, recollections were of being accepted and of a sense of belonging to Argentina. Belonging can also be a hard-won process. For Chinese-Americans who came to the U.S. to build the railroad during the nineteenth century, and who were not accepted by the majority group in the U.S. for a long time, a sense of belonging may be quite new. For recent immigrants, subtle differences in language, as the writer Jonathan Raban points out, are reminders that even for an English speaker, American English can be hopelessly befuddling. No matter what the circumstances, belonging inevitably evokes strong feelings in both native and newcomer.

S.C. 2016

“What decadence this belonging rubbish was, what time the rich must have if they could sit around and weave great worries out of such threadbare things.”

— Sunjeev Sahota, The Year of the Runaways (2015)

Concept: Belonging

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