Feelings of Belonging

How do subjects experience belonging to social groups, and how are feelings of belonging socio-politically modulated? In this paper, we tackle these two questions by addressing both the phenomenology and the affective politics of such experiences. Regarding their phenomenology, we distinguish two ways to feel belonging: as an existential feeling and as an episodic emotion. To illustrate, we focus on cases of migration and pluri-culturality. We show that feelings of belonging to social groups can often be unsettled or ambiguous and we analyse feelings of belonging and non-belonging as part of a continuum with different shades of in-between. We argue that these shades are generated by a fundamental phenomenological feature of feelings of belonging: they are relational through and through. They are not just evaluations of how one experiences one fits into one’s social environment (how much perceived congruence there is between oneself and others) but they also evaluate the degree of recognition one receives from others. In other words, feelings of belonging respond to whether and to what extent one perceives one is esteemed by others as a worthy member of ‘us’. “Fitting in” and being esteemed are not binary, on/off states, and therefore neither are feelings of belonging. Stressing relationality thus helps us shed light on a crucial feature of in-between identities. We then fathom the affective politics of (non-)belonging. We employ Iris Marion Young’s notion of “asymmetrical reciprocity” and argue that any claim of recognition that feelings of belonging articulate must be seen against the background of asymmetric social positions.