Up from the archive: Conceptualising the Ambivalence and Complexity of Migrant Belonging. Natalie Calleja thinks with Noble 2013 *

Abstract

In this article I reflect on the salient theoretical contribution Greg Noble made to the field of sociology in his 2013 paper entitled ‘“It is home but it is not home”: Habitus, field and the migrant’. I reflect on the pertinence of Noble's commitment to grappling with conceptual tensions to capture migrants’ social experiences in the multifaceted social worlds they belong to through his development of Bourdieu's notion of habitus and reconceptualisation of the notion of field. I examine the theoretical complexity Noble's paper extends to conceptualising migrant belonging as ambivalent, pedagogical, and contingent on the plurality of social worlds they inhabit. Thinking with Noble and drawing on theoretical threads from my doctoral project that are attentive to the politics of belonging and complexity of place, I reflect on the importance of developing place-attentive conceptual frames to capture varying and disparate modes of (non-)belonging experienced by bodies in place.

Introduction

For decades, the field of sociology has posed critical questions and developed conceptual tools to generate more nuanced and encompassing theorisations of the concept of belonging. It has been argued that the foundation of sociological theory can be traced to the field's principal concern for understanding belonging (Yuval-Davis, 2004). Central to this history of sociological inquiry has been a commitment to exploring conceptual orientations that deepen knowledge and ways of examining and understanding how social and material factors interact and affect people's experiences of belonging (Anthias, 2006; Harris et al., 2021; May, 2013; Yuval-Davis, 2006). As a postgraduate critical scholar researching the politics of belonging and complexity of place in young people's lives, I continue to find theoretical inspiration in sociological scholarship that examines and questions how, and to what extent, the concept of belonging is adequately theorised within and beyond the field. Sociological concerns and intersecting contemporary issues connected to people's experiences of belonging including, for example, globalisation, capitalist exploitation, climate collapse, continuing settler-colonial projects, ethnonationalism, forced displacement, and many other omnipresent issues continue to position theoretical inquiry, rigour, and debate as essential.

In this reflective piece I revisit Greg Noble's 2013 article entitled ‘“It is home but it is not home”: Habitus, field and the migrant’, which grappled with conceptual tensions to develop more nuanced understandings about migrants’ experiences of belonging. I begin with a summary of Noble's article followed by an analysis of the salience of the author's conceptual development of Bourdieu's notion of habitus in relation to the migrant. From here I reflect on the affordances of Noble's reconceptualisation of Bourdieu's notion of field that captures the multiplicity of social worlds the migrant inhabits, manoeuvres, and belongs to. Finally, I reflect on the importance of place-attentive conceptual frames that bring the varying and disparate modes of (non-)belonging experienced by bodies in place into view.

‘“It is Home but it is not Home”: Habitus, Field and the Migrant’

In his 2013 article, Noble examined the theoretical usefulness and limits of Bourdieu's notions of habitus and field when used to analyse migrant resettlement. The author's overarching conceptual contention was a call for a more nuanced understanding of Bourdieu's notion of habitus and a ‘micro-sociological’ reconceptualisation of the notion of field (2013, p. 354). Noble grounded his conceptual argument in an analysis of a speech that was delivered in two languages at a community event in Sydney by a migrant named Michael. Noble analysed the discomfort Michael appeared to display when he delivered his speech to attendees in English (to an English-speaking audience of politicians, academics, police officers etc.) compared to his embodied confidence when he delivered his speech in Arabic (to an audience of Arabic-speaking community members). Noble used his analysis of Michael's delivery of his speech to trouble the inadequacy of totalising conceptual frames that inhibit a more encompassing analysis of the plurality of social worlds migrants inhabit. Noble complicated Bourdieu's notion of habitus through an analysis of Michael's mixed feelings of both homeliness and unhomeliness in Australian society despite having migrated almost 40 years earlier. Critical of Bourdieu's early theorisation of the notion of habitus that frames habitus as static, the author sought to develop the notion to examine migrant resettlement as a process of disorientation and reorientation to the social fields of the place where a migrant resettles. Noble used the term ‘ethnicised habitus’ to describe the embodied dispositions the migrant acquires as part of the reorientation process of resettlement ‘through the learning to be the difference’ – embodied dispositions distinct from those of citizens who are automatically granted unrestricted belonging (2013, p. 349). By complicating the notion of habitus, the author also contended that Bourdieu's notion of field should be reconceptualised as overlapping instead of adjacent. Noble used his analysis of Michael's shift in embodied dispositions when delivering his speech in Arabic compared to English to highlight that, rather than switching between social worlds, Michael existed in multiple social worlds at once. Noble argued that these conceptual shifts capture the complexity of migrant belonging – an ambivalent mode of belonging which positions migrants in social fields in the context of Australian society in particular and differentiated ways (2013, p. 355).

Belonging Ambivalently

Through an analysis of the migrant's (Michael's) differentiated and ambivalent experiences of belonging, Noble posited important conceptual questions that continue to be theoretically useful and significant for the field of sociology today. I find this commitment to understanding the migrant's experience of reorientation through a more nuanced conceptualisation of habitus an important theoretical contribution. While Noble recognised that migration scholarship has sought to capture the distinct dispositions of migrants, he was critical of binaries that position the migrant as someone who is in a perpetual, intermediary state of disconnection. In doing so, he sought to bring into view the complexity of migration as more than a state of in-betweenness and insisted that we further develop the conceptual tools we use to theorise processes of reorientation. Noble asked us to move beyond understanding migration as primarily an experience of disorientation that renders migrants’ experiences of belonging as contradictory or stuck in a state of flux, and to instead recognise migrants’ experiences of belonging as ambivalent. As a scholar who is exploring how young people, including first- and second-generation migrant youth, navigate the politics of belonging in their everyday lives, I find this invitation to be one of continued pertinence for theorising the concept of belonging. By moving beyond conceptualising belonging as disorienting, ambivalences and disparities can be brought into view. Conceptualising belonging in this way is useful for understanding how experiences of belonging are shaped through processes of reorientation to the social worlds of the place one migrates to. It is important to note that while reorientation offers more analytical possibilities to understand migrants’ experiences of belonging in nuanced ways, scholars must not leave unchallenged what factors shape the process of reorientation and what the reorientation process means for ambivalent experiences of belonging. Noble invited us to contend with some of these factors that shape processes of reorientation through his commitment to adding conceptual depth to the notion of habitus which, he argued, is something that the migrant develops and learns through the reorienting process of resettlement.

The Pedagogy of Belonging

In his article, Noble sought to further develop the notion of habitus in a bid to move beyond an articulation of the migrant experience that positions the migrant body as ‘never learn[ing] capacities for adapting to the new’ (2013, p. 346). Importantly, rather than trace the ways in which the migrant subject reorients by learning the capacities to fit into the society in which they settle, the author instead paid attention to how the migrant subject learns, grapples with, and embodies difference. This direction of inquiry into the migrant subject's learnt difference and how these lessons produce a sense of feeling both at home and not at home extends critical and timely questions to how experiences of belonging can be understood.

These questions are particularly pertinent at a time when belonging is routinely used as a benchmark to assess various aspects of social life (O’Donnell et al., 2024), and cited by contemporary political discourse as essential to the welfare of modern society. For example, this is evident in political calls for social cohesion (Department of Parliamentary Services, 2025) and superdiversity (Ndhlovu, 2016; Zembylas, 2023). While words and phrases such as multiculturalism, interculturality, and cultural and ethnic diversity commonly attributed to the migrant body are not overtly obvious in the framing of these more contemporary political calls, the migrant body remains the overarching focus of them. For example, this is evident in the central objective of the annual national Mapping Social Cohesion survey, which ‘is to further understanding of the social impact of Australia's increasingly diverse immigration program’ (Scanlon Foundation Research Institute, 2025). It has been argued that the shift in political rhetoric from multiculturalism to social cohesion is ‘assimilationist’ – motivated by a desire to manufacture ‘homogenous societies’ through ‘control[ling] difference’ (Vasta, 2010, p. 505). This is apparent in the 2024 Mapping Social Cohesion survey, which, for instance, asked survey participants the extent to which they dis/agree with the statement: ‘in the modern world, maintaining the Australian way of life and culture is important’ (O’Donnell et al., 2024, p. 15). Survey questions like this, coupled with the social cohesion measurement tool's objective to monitor the social impact of migration, highlights the underlying objective of social cohesion rhetoric, that is, to ensure that in the face of increasingly diversified immigration (e.g., racialised patterns of migration), a homogenous national society will be maintained.

What is important to underscore is how these more contemporary political calls approach belonging. Contrary to Noble's perspective of learning difference, belonging is instead approached from the standpoint of learning to smooth over these differences – to integrate into the status quo of national society. Examining the ways in which contemporary political discourse positions belonging is significant, particularly when considering what these approaches consequently expect of the migrant body. If we briefly return to Michael's case Noble used to illustrate the process of reorientation for the migrant subject, we are reminded that, despite almost four decades passing since he resettled, Michael never felt entirely comfortable in the society he was part of but rather learnt that he is different. Yet, as previously mentioned, ‘national pride and belonging’ is a central domain used to measure the social cohesion of society (O’Donnell et al., 2024, p. 16). Therefore, to achieve social cohesion, the migrant body is consequently subjected to an implicit expectation to belong in such a way that maintains the status quo of the nation – to integrate.

Where does belonging by learning to integrate – to smooth over difference – leave Michael, a migrant who never quite felt like an insider in the society in which he lived for over half of his life and who, according to Noble, appeared to have assimilated to mainstream society? How is the migrant body that learns rather than smooths over difference positioned and treated in a society that expects the migrant body to integrate? And what are the consequent pedagogies and effects on the migrant body when the welfare of society is contingent on the migrant body bearing the responsibility of integrating into national society – a society where the migrant has instead embodied an ongoing feeling of foreignness through learnt difference? These questions are prompted by both the conceptual nuance Noble attended to in his article, and the theoretical and empirical tensions I am grappling with in my own research examining the politics of belonging. While attending to these questions is beyond the parameters of this article, I have posed them in the context of Michael's case to foreground the conceptual complexity that Noble's development of the notion of habitus extends to questions of migrant belonging and, by extension, to theorisations of belonging.

Belonging to Multiple Social Worlds

Through Noble's development of the notion of habitus, he also argued for a reconceptualisation of Bourdieu's notion of field to be able to capture the complexity of migrants’ social experiences in the various social worlds they inhabit and navigate. This reconceptualisation of field continues to extend analytical nuance to inquiries that seek to examine processes of migrant reorientation to the social worlds they migrate to. Noble contended that fields must be conceptualised as overlapping instead of bordering planes. The author used his analysis of Michael's bodily shifts during the delivery of his speech to the English- and Arabic-speaking audiences to illuminate the multiplicity of social worlds Michael simultaneously manoeuvred through, and in doing so challenged conceptualisations of field that only ever position fields as adjacent to each other. Importantly, the author foregrounded that the shifts in Michael's dispositions when switching between languages were not the result of the embodiment of different relations within a singular social field but are instead the ‘different social worlds Michael inhabits … co-present in the room in which he is speaking’ (2013, p. 354). Noble posited that fields ‘fold into one another’ – using Michael's case to illustrate that the ‘field of ethnicity [is] a multidimensional interface between the field of ethnic communities and the larger political field on which it is dependent’ (2013, p. 354).

By extension, Noble's reconceptualisation of the notion of field also offers further theoretical and analytical nuance to the concept of belonging. It reveals the fundamental flaws in approaches to belonging that understand it is a singular destination one can arrive at. As previously noted, this narrow conceptual orientation is evident in contemporary political calls for social cohesion that positions belonging as a precursor (for example, see: Department of Parliamentary Services, 2025; O’Donnell et al., 2024). This understanding of belonging assumes one will achieve belonging once they integrate into the dominant culture of national society, that is, ‘Anglo culture’ (Hage, 1998, p. 83). Thinking with Noble's reconceptualisation of field, a narrow conceptualisation of belonging such as this assumes there is a singular social field to belong to; in Michael's case, belonging to the singular social field of Australian society. However, as Michael himself noted: ‘within the [Arabic-speaking] community I can connect well, I can act more confidently, I am recognised more, this is not the case when I interact with Australian society’ (2013, p. 350). This disparity is evident in Noble's observation of Michael's dispositional shift when delivering his speech in two languages to English- and Arabic-speaking audiences. What Michael's reflection and case foregrounds is that belonging is complicated by the multiple social worlds he inhabits – the overlapping of fields. Of particular significance is Noble's argument that co-present social fields can exist in the one place, which supports a conceptualisation of belonging that captures the ambivalent, unstable, impermanent, ephemeral, and contingent nature of belonging, regardless of the singular physical location one inhabits at any given point in time – the room where a speech is delivered, the suburb one lives in, the place one migrates to, the place one migrates from and returns to, the place(s) that people call home, the place of dispossession.

Where, What, and Who is Australian Society?

The larger political field in question in Noble's article was Australian society. From the outset Noble is intent on closely examining what Michael's bodily shifts during the delivery of his speech revealed about his relationships to people and spaces and where these relationships are situated in the social fields of the Australian context more broadly, that is, ‘a close examination of a particular body in a particular place’ (2013, p. 344). Yet, while Noble theorised the ‘field of ethnicity’ to examine this (2013, p. 354), the broader political field of Australian society in which the field of ethnicity is contingent did not receive the same attention. Had he contextualised Australian society, Noble's reconceptualisation of field would have brought more of Michael's case and the migrant's resettlement experience in Australian society into analytical view.

Although an encompassing contextualisation of Australian society is beyond the scope of this paper, I would like to briefly trace what I consider to be essential contextual threads that are foundational to analyses of migrants’ experiences of resettlement in the context of Australian society. These threads are drawn from my doctoral project, which has rendered a theorisation of place to be foundational to exploring young people's experiences of belonging. This theoretical perspective is one that is shaped by and shared with scholars within and beyond the field of sociology who have positioned a focus on place in scholarly inquiry as both significant and necessary to research that seeks to contend with and understand how people experience, and are affected by a multiplicity of complex social worlds (Harris et al., 2021; Moreton-Robinson, 2003; Tuck and McKenzie, 2016; Veracini, 2010).

To contextualise the field of Australian society, one must begin with a necessary account that traces us back to its inception. As Goenpul woman of the Quandamooka people Aileen Moreton-Robinson states, the Australian context is a ‘post-colonizing nation-state’ (2015, p. 3). Australian society is born from the British Empire's systematic dispossession of Indigenous people from their land, a violent colonising claim to Indigenous land made ‘under the legal fiction terra nullius – land belonging to no one’ (Moreton-Robinson, 2015, p. 4). White Australia was built by white British migrants who were, as Moreton-Robinson underscores, ‘[the] pioneers … that developed the nation … who represented the newly emerging national identity [in the later part of the 19th century]’ (2015, p. 5). Importantly, the white Australia nation-state that Moreton-Robinson draws our attention to is the larger political field of Australia – and, as per Noble's reconceptualisation of field, this larger political field of Australia is the field by which all other fields in Australian society are contingent. This context of white Australia is foundational to exploring the disparate experiences in and of Australian society – a society that, based on racialisation and the possessive rights that racialisation bestowed, granted bodies varying modes and degrees of (non-)belonging to the nation-state (Moreton-Robinson, 2015). Importantly, Moreton-Robinson underscores that Indigenous people were excluded from this mode of belonging and that it was ‘the white body [that] was the norm and measure for identifying who could belong’, which is also evident in white Australia's history of racial exclusion, including, for example, the white Australia policy (2015, p. 5).

A contextualisation of white Australia and racialised belonging adds significant analytical nuance to Noble's examination of Michael's varying degrees of bodily (dis)comfort exhibited during the delivery of his speech to two distinct audiences. Noble's reconceptualisation of field foregrounded that the overlapping of social worlds is prompted by the entanglement of characteristics of a particular context and setting. In Michael's case, this is evident in the distinct but overlapping ‘field of ethnicity’ and the broader political field of Australian society on which it is contingent – an overlapping of fields which was engendered by the context of the community organisation event where Michael delivered his speech (2013, p. 354). If we consider the particularities of this context and setting – ‘the offices of a community organisation with which Michael had been involved for many years’ (Noble, 2013, p. 341) – one can assume the characteristics of this place represented a place of comfort, belonging, homeliness, and ease for Michael. However, on the night of Michael's speech, what was the unique configuration of the community organisation setting that prompted Michael to display varying degrees of bodily (dis)comfort when he delivered his speech in two languages?

It can be assumed that what was distinct about the entanglement of contextual characteristics at the community organisation setting on the evening of the speech was the affective presence of the bodies of the English-speaking audience in the room. Michael himself indicated – in his reflections shared with Noble of resettlement to Australia – an astute awareness of the affects the Anglo-Australian body had on his dispositions. He shared that since migrating when he was 17 years old, being in proximity to the Anglo-Australian body incited self-consciousness, uncertainty about what to say and how to act, and frequently prefaced/concluded such reflections by drawing comparisons to the body of an Arabic-speaking person to illustrate the contrasting dispositional comfort and ease he felt in their presence. Yet, although Noble recognised belonging to be ambivalent for the migrant subject as a result of the migrant subject's dispositions not matching the dispositions of the citizen who fully belongs at birth, how habitus and field are shaped by processes of racialisation within the context of Australian society was underexplored. Noble did briefly gesture towards the whiteness Michael acquired through his resettlement in Australian society that did not render him ‘white enough’ (2013, p. 351). However, a deeper consideration of place-attentive processes of racialisation extends conceptual nuance to Noble's development of Bourdieu's notion of habitus, drawing attention to additional pedagogical dimensions of learnt difference acquired through the process of migrant reorientation to the place of resettlement. Importantly, an attentiveness to place can widen the lens used to bring into view what shapes the ‘ethnicised habitus’ of the migrant in Australian society (2013, p. 351), what (and who) prompts the overlapping of fields, and why some bodies are granted unconditional belonging while other bodies never quite feel like they belong – irrespective of the time one has been connected to the place they call home.

Conclusion

Noble's development of Bourdieu's notion of habitus and reconceptualisation of the notion of field remains a salient theoretical contribution to the field of sociology, adding theoretical complexity to a body of sociology scholarship committed to destabilising conceptual orientations that risk monolithic, homogenising analyses of social experiences in a complex, multidimensional world (Lahire, 2011; Sayad, 2004). In doing so, Noble's article extends an enduring invitation to the field of sociology and scholars who are concerned with migration more broadly – a call to develop and grapple with conceptual tensions and nuance to capture the complexity of social worlds that the migrant inhabits and experiences. In response to this call, and my thinking with Noble as part of this reflective piece, I have drawn on some of the theoretical threads in my doctoral project that are attentive to place to be able to grapple further with the disparate and varied experiences of (non-)belonging experienced by bodies in place. My hope is that the reflections I briefly trace – inspired by Noble's article and my doctoral research – also serve as an invitation for the field of sociology and scholars concerned with questions of belonging to reflect on the affordances of developing place-attentive conceptual frames to capture the ambivalence and complexity of belonging.