Youth, Place and Theories of Belonging

Sadia Habib, Michael Ward, Sadia Habib, Michael RM Ward, Michael Ward, Sadia Habib, Michael RM Ward

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781351362726
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Sociologia

Drawing on interdisciplinary perspectives, Youth, Place and Theories of Belonging showcases cutting-edge empirical research on young people's lifeworlds. The scholars demonstrate that belonging is personal, infused with individual and collective histories as well as interwoven with conceptions of place. In studying how young people adapt to social change the research highlights the plurality of belonging, as well as its temporal and fleeting nature.

In the field of youth studies, we have seen a recent emphasis on studying the ways youth live out everyday multiculturalisms in an increasingly globalised world. How young people negotiate belonging in everyday life and how they come to understand their positions in fragmented societies remain emerging areas of scholarship. Composed of twelve chapters, the collection references key sites and institutions in young people's lives such as schools, community/cultural centres, neighbourhoods and spaces of consumption. Drawing from diverse areas such as the rural, the urban as well as displacements and mobilities, this international collection enhances our understanding of the theories employed in the study of youth identity practices.

Written in a direct and clear style, this collection of essays will be of interest to researchers working in geography, theories of affect, gender, mobility, performativities, and theories of space/place. Investigating how young people come to belong can open up new spaces and provide critical insights into young people's identities.

Chapter 1
Introduction: investigating youth and belonging

Sadia Habib and Michael R. M. Ward

Introduction

At its core, belonging is about connection, membership, attachment and a sense of security. However, in social theory, belonging can often be outlined as paradoxical, contradictory and vague. In composing this collection on youth, place and belonging, we acknowledge that belonging is often challenging to conceptualise when it is ‘vaguely defined and ill-theorized’ (Antonsich 2010, p. 644). Tied closely to the consequences of postcolonialism and globalisation, the study of belonging appears in explorations of geographic, cultural, national, linguistic and ‘racial’ borders (Habib 2017; Davis, Gorashi & Smets 2018). Furthermore, scholars working within the emerging field of belonging have used such theories in multiple areas, everything from citizenship to digital media, leisure, casual employment, migration, affect and familial household dynamics. Within contemporary scholarship, belonging appears as a theory, a conceptual lens, as well as an analytical framework, which, of course, contributes to its conceptual vagueness.

What comes to the fore in Youth, Place and Theories of Belonging is not what Baumeister and Leary (1995, pp. 497, 500–501) call a ‘belongingness hypothesis’, which generates a sense of belonging aligned with specific criteria such as long-lasting, positive, stable and affective, albeit this varies from person to person. On the contrary, the scholars we have assembled in this book theorise belonging as a discursive and complex process – a personal dialectic in constant negotiation with one’s surroundings. So, while belonging may often be linked to a linear, developmental process of thinking (acquisition of language, formal legalities, the documentation of the nation-state), many in this collection passionately emphasise that belonging is far from linear and is much more personal, infused with individual and collective histories, tied closely to the social milieu youth experience daily across the globe. Furthermore, belonging occurs not only in reference to place but is highly relational and closely linked to collectives of people (Antonsich 2010).

This introduction first discusses how belonging has been operationalised in youth studies as well as the relationship between belonging and theories of place. It then traces the outline of the book in which each chapter uses theories associated with belonging to interrogate empirical data. Thus, each chapter contains a critical analysis of where these theories proved valuable to the authors, allowing for new explorations and mentioning where there are certain weaknesses.

Operationalising theories of belonging and youth studies

According to Butler and others in this volume, belonging takes on local forms and is closely informed by intersectional identity categories. As belonging is tied closely both to everyday experiences and common collective experiences, recent theorisations have highlighted the ways in which it remains racialised, classed, gendered and linked to place. Additionally, we the editors see belonging realised in reference to material goods and deeply inflected by both physical and online spaces. Belonging, deeply interwoven with constructions of status and meaning making, is subject to continual negotiations based on ‘conceptions of respect, authenticity and value’ (Stahl & Habib 2017, pp. 266–267). These conceptions heavily contribute to how young people construct their identities or, as Baak et al. (this volume) write, ‘Questions of belonging centre on the question of who is “a stranger”, and who does not belong’.

Given its contradictory, complex and discursive nature, recent accounts from social theorists have also critiqued how stable the feeling of belonging actually is (Marcu 2014). In exploring migrants and refugees, Davis, Gorashi and Smets (2018) have used the theoretical provocation of ‘contested’ belonging, where belonging is explored as ‘space, practice and as biography’, where it is ‘imagined, enacted, constrained, negotiated and contested’ (p. 4). Furthermore, in recognising its temporality, Cuervo and Wyn (2014) assert that ‘belonging brings the idea of youth as a social process back into the centre of analyses’, thereby ‘enabling researchers to recognise the significance of relationships to people, place and to the times’ (p. 901), which are, of course, subject to change. Additionally, in Ward (2019) has highlighted processes of what he calls ‘(un)belonging’, where individuals do not feel secure in specific institutions but instead feel out of place and uncertain.

Theories of modern social change, particularly those of Beck (1992) and Gid-dens (1991), have had a significant impact on studies of youth in sociology today. However, as Farrugia (2013) notes: ‘The image of a homogeneous modernity must be replaced by a spatialised sociology of youth biographies that is open to the geographies of inequality that structure youth transitions’ (p. 300). Focussing on how young people negotiate belonging has the potential to provide insights into the multi-faceted relationships which, in turn, shape young lives and the nature and quality of connections between youth and their worlds (Cuervo & Wyn 2014). As such, Butler and Muir (2017), amongst others, emphasise the role of agency in theorising belonging and its potential to ‘prioritise the efforts made by young people to remain connected to people, places and issues that matter to them as they carve out a place in which they belong in the modern economy’ (p. 320). This process of connection can often be fragmented, discursive and precarious. As Stahl and Habib (2017) have previously argued, young people today experience many ‘diverse and contradictory discourses as they come to understand place and their own positionality; they both ascribe to narratives and construct counter-narratives’ (p. 276), which are, of course, never fully realised as the process is continual. Or, putting it more precisely, Marcu (2014) states that ‘the world is constantly changing, and thus our sense of home and belonging is constantly readapting and readjusting to the new realities’ (p. 327).

The research presented in this collection emphasises this process of re-adaptation and readjustment as well as the plurality of belonging, showing how one can both feel a strong sense of belonging but also, simultaneously, feel lonely and alienated. Yuval-Davis (2006) writes there is a multiplicity of belongings where ‘people can “belong” in many different ways and to many different objects of attachments’ (p. 199). For example, Loewenthal and Broughton (this volume) ask how belonging may be possible in multiple places, beyond the location in which one grows up. This is akin to May’s (2017) notion of ‘belonging from afar’, which emphasises the importance of memory and nostalgia, a significant part of theorising belonging (see Miranda & Arancibia this volume; Wyn et al. this volume). In exploring theories of belonging, Cuzzocrea (2018, p. 1) argues that young people are entrenched in ‘motility’, the possibility of a type of movement that arises out of a specific relationship with one’s current context, which is comprised of three dimensions: access, competence and cognitive appropriation. This motility can, to varying extents, problematise the strong mobility orientation which can occur through continuous ‘lived’ relationship with place, a tension that Cuzzocrea calls ‘rooted mobility’. Such theorisations allow us to delve deeper into the transnational experience (Anthias 2006; Marcu 2014; Krupets et al. 2017) and explore to what extent mobility and immobility inform identity negotiations for youth today.

Consistently, the scholars in the collection draw our attention to the possible temporalities of belonging (Marcu 2014), where questions remain as to its stability and durability. While belonging is institutionally validated (Sattar this volume) and socially realised (McEwan this volume), the scholars in this collection are increasingly focussed on its fleeting nature. Looking across the collection, the authors use theories of belonging to highlight how young people, regardless of social context, are striving for a certain sense of legitimacy as they understand how to belong and to what extent they can belong (Habib 2017; Fraser et al. 2017; Davis, Gorashi & Smets 2018; Habib 2019). In considering temporality and legitimacy, many chapters highlight the tension concerning young people’s sense of personal agency and desire to belong, despite at times a severe sense of marginalisation which can influence their aspirations. As Baak et al. (this volume) write, ‘belonging is both controlled and negotiated, where the borders and boundaries of belonging are not fixed, but discursively constructed, making belonging malleable’.

Belonging and place

As this chapter has outlined, belonging is a growing field of study. As an analytical tool, belonging has been theorised in a number of different ways in wider sociological, anthropological and geographical studies. Place has played an important part in much of this theorisation. In empirical and theoretical research on belonging, we see young people can and do construct status and meaningful identities for themselves – their conceptions of belonging – which are often heavily influenced by their relationships with ‘territories’ and places (Habib 2017). As Thrift (1997, p. 160) states, ‘the difference between location and place is that places have meanings for us which cannot be reduced to their location’ (p. 160). Similar to this thinking, for Massey (1994) places are ‘articulated moments in networks of social relations and understandings’ (p. 67). According to Cuervo and Wyn (2017), ‘everyday practices located in place layer onto each other to create performances of belonging that involve relationships with people and place’ (p. 225).

Historically, belonging has been considered a spatial concept (Molgat 2002; Marcu 2014), a process of both identification and contestation to place-based attachments where young people may struggle to understand their sense of home (Christou 2011; Krupets et al. 2017). Prince (2014) draws our attention to how ‘place-based experiences, such as belonging, aversion and entrapment may be internalised and encoded into possible selves, thus producing [a] emplaced future self-concept’ (p. 697). As scholars theorise belonging in this collection, central to the analysis is how identity construction takes place in and through the making of places. For example, in critically considering the role belonging plays in experiences of immigration, Marcu (2014) writes: ‘Belonging is the mediated representational practice of the diasporic condition articulated through experiences of home and migration. Therefore, belonging is shaped by mobility and the extent to which the nostalgic and affective spaces of home shape migrant identification’ (p. 331).

Due to shifts in globalised labour flows, as well as educational and leisure opportunities (See Ward 2015), young people may experience shifts in place, from locale to locale and country to country. During these movements, they experience overlapping and conflicting ways of being and belonging as they navigate new logics and hierarchies (Baak et al. this volume). The emotional connections that may form may be non-linear and multi-facited; furthermore, they may be influenced significantly by time or not (Krupets et al. 2017).

Therefore, as Relph (1976, p. 141) argues, identity construction as a continual process is ‘directly experienced phenomena of the lived-world’ and ‘fusions of human and natural order [that] are the significant centres of our immediate experiences of the world’. The scholars in Youth, place and theories of belonging draw upon theories of place and space in tandem with theories of belonging to investigate how young people negotiate coming to belong. We now move on to refer to the chapters in more detail and highlight the authors’ contributions to the belonging literature.

Outline of the book

The collection is focussed on broadening our understanding of theories of belonging as opposed to devising a singular analytical framework, which has been proposed in previous scholarship (cf. Antonsich 2010; Yuval-Davis 2006). The international scholars in this edited collection seek to build on ‘theories of belonging’ while simultaneously operationalising their own interpretations as they explore youth in diverse and complex contexts.

The collection begins with a chapter written by scholars who have consistently worked at the frontier of theorising youth and theories of belonging. Johanna Wyn, Hernán Cuervo and Julia Cook tell us belonging ‘is about relationships, it invites a consideration of both human and non-human elements that are particularly salient to young people’s lives across time’. Drawing on a longitudinal qualitative study of young Australians’ transitions to adulthood, the Life Patterns research programme, they emphasise the spatial dimensions, demonstrating the multi-faceted nature of belonging which, according to the authors, must be theorised as relationships between people, places and things influenced by time and through everyday routines, ‘layered over time’. Wyn, Lantz & Harris (2012) suggest that the focus on new materialist approaches has the potential to extend ‘the scope of analysis of belonging in relation to place because they emphasise the materiality of the world, both social and natural, in the production of the social’.

While Wyn et al. focus on spatial and new materialist approaches to explore belonging, Chapter 3 by Melanie Baak, Renae Summers, Shepard Masocha, Deirdre Tedmanson, Peter Gale, Hans Pieters and Awit Kuac explores the notion of the ‘Other’ in studies of belonging as ‘un-done and re-done across multiple borders of body and place’. They consider the ‘geographic, cultural, national, linguistic and “racial” borders’ which structure notions of difference between ‘us’ and ‘them’. Their scholarship draws on data from a qualitative study of young people of refugee background from South Sudan living in Darley, Australia, and the ways in which their belonging is negotiated. Through interviews with community mentors, as well as those who police and govern the public spaces these young people inhabit, Baak et al. demonstrate the ways in which ‘surveillance can control the forms of behaviour and ways of being that are acceptable and belong within a given society, thereby also determining those behaviours and ways of being that do not belong’.

The next chapter considers conceptions of resistance by LGBTQ+ youth in Canada. Jennifer Marchbank and Tiffany Muller Myrdahl draw on research on LGBTQ+ people’s leisure practices in Vancouver, British Columbia. Focussing critically on space, the authors demonstrate the ways in which LGBTQ+-friendly leisure sites are not guaranteed to be welcoming to all. Drawing primarily on Sara Ahmed’s (2006) work on queer phenomenology, the research Marchbank and Muller Myrdahl present demonstrates how youth come to belong through their physical presence and their queering of certain spaces, albeit temporarily. They use Ahmed (2006) to explore how young people intentionally fit into their worlds where comfortability is significant. As the LGBTQ+ young people focus on and engage in ‘hanging out’ practices directly related to their sense of place, they develop a sense of belonging within a public sphere where they often feel like outsiders.

In Chapter 5, Gordon exa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Notes on the contributors
• Foreword
• 1 Introduction: investigating youth and belonging
• 2 Expanding theoretical boundaries from youth transitions to belonging and new materiality
• 3 Surveillance, belonging and community spaces for young people from refugee backgrounds in Australia
• 4 Queering Timmies: theorising LGBTQ youth claiming and making space in Surrey, BC, Canada
• 5 ‘Adults decided our fate’: children and young people navigating space, territory and conflicting identities in the ‘new’ Northern Ireland
• 6 Travel imaginaries of youth in New York City: history, ethnicity and the politics of mobility
• 7 Women, spatial scales and belonging: signalling inequality in Latin America
• 8 Brotherhood and belonging: creating pedagogic spaces for positive discourses of Aboriginal youth
• 9 Belonging without believing? Making space for marginal masculinities at the Young Men’s Christian Association in the United Kingdom and The Gambia
• 10 Precarious class positions in Spam City: youth, place and class in the ‘missing middle’
• 11 Arenas of empowerment? Case study of a ‘multicultural’ high school in Oslo, Norway
• 12 Local and refugee youth in rural Australia: negotiating intercultural relationships and belonging in rural places
• 13 Politics of class and belonging in Pakistan: student learning, communities of practice and social mobility
• 14 Conclusion: youth and belonging: agency, place and negotiation
• Index