Abstract
In 2023, Wang et al. published a meta-analysis on social isolation, loneliness, and mortality. Looking at 90 prospective cohort studies that included over 2 million individuals, they found a significant association between social isolation, loneliness, and an increased risk in what they term, all-cause mortality. This systematic review and meta-analysis quantified what we have felt for years - social relationships are a vital part of the human condition. The human condition thrives on the opportunity to bond, attach, engage, connect, and be a part of a community. Specifically, research on happiness finds a strong correlation between happiness and social connectedness. In a recent review published in the field of mind-body medicine, Esch et al. (2024) found that love, social connectedness, and happiness are interrelated and are an essential part of mind-body health and well-being.
Findings that highlight the importance and value-added by feeling an affinity for a place, situation, or group extend beyond public health and mind-body medicine. Whether we are talking about classrooms or communities, patients in a hospital or members of a political party, research from a kaleidoscope of disciplines suggests that we thrive when we feel connected to a group, safe and included within a specific place, or valued in a particular environment (see Covarrubias, 2024).
Enter the concept of belonging.
Belonging refers to the levels and manifestations of ease, identification with, and recognition of being part of one's surroundings. Belonging has largely been rooted in affectivity, attachment, and a person-centred orientation to one's surroundings. To belong is to feel you are where you should be (Antonsich, 2010) and that you are recognised and accepted as being connected with, and rightly part of, a specific environment (Savage et al., 2005). Saltus et al. (2022) highlighted the diverse understandings of belonging. These include instances of non-belonging based on factors such as nationality (Yuval-Davis, 2011) or location (Anthias, 2006, 2009), illustrating the multifaceted nature of this concept.
The concept of belonging is multi-scalar. It can be understood as the emotional component of feeling at, or yearning for, home, or a political claiming of recognition and rights to belong (Yuval-Davis, 2011), with belonging also understood as an attachment to multiple national locations, as explored by Anthias, (2006, 2009) and (s)elective belonging based on choice, class, economic affluence and notions of communal living in urban (Benson and Jackson, 2012; Savage et al., 2005) and rural (Haartsen & Stockdale, 2018) settings., Some scholars (for example, Antonsich, 2010, Bennett, 2014, 2015, May, 2011) rightly ground notions of belonging within an intersecting spatiality and materiality. In this sense belonging is an inherently geographical concept, in that a specific collection of tangible and intangible entities and processes (people, plants, practices, performances) are meant to be where they are (Mee & Wright, 2009).
Another aspect of belonging is ontological belonging (Bennett, 2013, 2014, 2015). This form of belonging is not static but comes into being and is (re)enacted over time through everyday practices, rituals and events materialising across generations, and across family, friendship and social networks. In these places, notions of who belongs are shaped by a familiarity of shared values and ‘ways of knowing’, which are rooted in deeply embedded ties to the socio-material and historic underpinnings of a place, and to those deemed to be part of it.
The abundance of research on belonging leads to one conclusion - our sense of belonging as human beings is vital to surviving and thriving, whether at home, work, school, or elsewhere in the world (Strayhorn, 2019).
While we are aware of the core disciplines around belonging, we assert that belonging transcends any single discipline, construct, conceptual framework, theoretical model, or methodology.
And this is where the journal, Belonging, enters centre stage.
Our journal aims to provide an international platform for the dissemination of scholarly work on the concept of belonging. Belonging strives to include the translation or integration of research into practice, avoiding the limitations of an original-research-only approach. Instead, we seek to elevate both original research in the field and the rigorous study of translation, implementation, and integration into diverse contexts. Scholarly work will include, but not necessarily be limited to, original data-driven research from both quantitative and qualitative methodologies, theoretical and conceptual articles, systematic reviews, meta-analyses, meta-syntheses, case studies, and commentaries related to the study of belonging.
The scope of this journal will reflect the disciplinary, multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary nature of the concept of belonging. Given the comprehensive nature of belonging, we want the journal to serve as a platform for articles that focus on specific experts, contexts, and methodologies and bring together a diverse community of scholars to enhance the intersection of different disciplines, fields, paradigms, contexts, and perspectives. As such, collaborative and collective work will be the hallmark of this journal, with the commissioning of special issues or topics that reflect trends and current events within the global community set as key features. The audience for this journal is a multi-tiered community of stakeholders. While the primary audience will be researchers whose work includes, intersects, or focuses on the study of belonging, other stakeholders include academics, policymakers, NGOs, graduate students, and undergraduate students.
The editorial board has been created and developed to reflect a diverse representation of scholars and practitioners from across the globe and to include individuals from across the career timeline—field practitioners, early career faculty, senior faculty, and policy-focused thought leaders. This diverse representation will reflect the aim and scope of an inclusive journal.
This recruiting effort will seek to represent racial, ethnic, and gender diversity to ensure that their voices help guide this journal towards the editorial objective. At its heart, Belonging has an international editorial board comprising scholars and practitioners from diverse disciplines who have expertise in the study of belonging.
So, why now? Why this journal, this topic, now? Understanding what belonging means has never been more important. A purposeful, intentional, and deliberate elevation of the importance of belonging will, we believe, address dimensions of injustice - material, cultural-epistemic, and political/geopolitical - as they are deeply rooted in notions of belonging. In addition, fostering a sense of belonging is intrinsically linked to social justice efforts, whether the focus is on addressing cultural-epistemic injustices, challenging geopolitics of knowledge production, or on material injustices like socioeconomic disparities. This journal will move the conversation from solely one on impact factor to one on factoring impact across the human condition.
A key part of Sage's mission is independence with impact. By that, the publisher means less focus on impact factors and a greater emphasis on societal impact. Collectively, we want this journal to have a positive effect on society, creating communities where people feel they belong whether immigrants coming to a different country feeling welcomed as they land as opposed to ostracised; or school children, who have traditionally struggled with an education system not fit for purpose (arguably, if it ever was!), thriving at school because senior education leaders now recognise that adapting a more neurodivergent friendly classroom can help neuro-minority and neuro-majority alike to reach their potential; or transgender communities, when faced with healthcare issues, judicial complaints, educational trauma, can finally find their collective voice for positive changes within health, law, education, politics and other key facets of life.
And to bring this story to a more micro level, the UK-based publisher behind this launch idea has a mission in life: to change the education system in the UK (and ideally across the globe). Her son was diagnosed with polyenia (otherwise known as ADHD) at the age of 6. Polyenia is her preferred term as there is no reference to the negative language of “deficits” and “disorders”.
In Year 1, she removed him from his first primary school in London due to the school's behavioural management system that was, in her opinion, both punitive and Victorian in approach. Successive schools were more inclusive, and in November 2022, her family moved to West Yorkshire, in the north of England.
But wherever you go in the UK, schools are operating under restrictive government rules and curricula: heavy emphasis on maths and English, with much less focus on creative subjects such as art or music, even sports.
Her son's current school has an excellent Special Educational Needs (SEN) lead and generally has a nurturing approach towards the children in its care. Out of the 450 children on the register, 70 have additional needs, 40 of whom have a diagnosis of autism, polyenia (ADHD), among other conditions.
But they don’t get it all right.
Many parents, with whom she has spoken in recent weeks, talk of their frustration at not being heard by their children's teachers. For example, a child forced to sit forwards even though they learn better sitting sideways; a child masking at school but hating it so much they kick off when they get home; a child who is presented with a so-called positive behaviour intervention with the objective of “keeping feet and hands safe” (very clear) and “following instructions (less clear and harder to achieve if dysregulated). In her son's case, if he didn’t fulfil the objectives, he was forced to stay over breaktime to complete the work. Breaktime: a time to run off his excessive energy and to bond with other children. Hard to establish belonging when it causes “othering” among his peers. Thankfully, this is a school that listens and reacts. Very soon they adapted this intervention to make it much clearer to her child and they dropped words like “silly” and “rude” when describing his challenging behaviour, in favour of “dysregulated”. This is great progress!
From conversations with the various parents, the publisher set up a parent and children's support group called Neurodiversity Group Celebrations (NGC) with two main aims:
The idea was very simple: food, drink, play and connect. On 21 June 2024, an auspicious day, not only because it was a Friday but because 21st June is traditionally known as the Summer Solstice in the UK, the NGC met at the publisher's tiny house.
There were 15 children in total, aged between 5 and 15. Ten or eleven were autistic and/or polyenic, and the remainder were their neurotypical siblings. Some had diagnoses, some did not. Others were on the waiting list.
Parents ranged from single mothers to grandmas with custodial care over their autistic grandchild to families with a mother and father.
The outcomes? In the words of one grandma, “wildly successful!”
Why, might you ask? Because the children had a whale of a time. They played hide-and-seek in the “jungle”, a common across the road where the grass is waist high. They made new friendships, and they consolidated established friendships.
And for the parents and care-givers? They realised they were not alone. We have all faced difficult times at home, at school, at the supermarket, in the park, at the hairdresser, the doctor, the dentist. Suddenly, they could share those stories. And start to laugh about them. It was beautiful to watch.
Research on belonging in our schools and classrooms reflects the micro level story above. For example, the average weighted mean effect size of belonging on student learning is 0.46 (www.visiblelearningmetax.com). This effect size was calculated from 3 meta-analyses, comprised of 97 studies, 76,446 students, and 174 effects (see Allen et al., 2016; Nurmi, 2012; Moallem, 2013). Belonging has the potential to accelerate student learning in our classrooms and schools; it is a key to education success (Strayhorn, 2019).
This personal account is just the first of many happy gatherings, where a sense of belonging goes from strength to strength and children no longer feel like outsiders and parents and carers no longer feel so alone. And thus, we close this editorial introduction with an invitation. We want to personally invite you to utilise this international platform for your independent, collaborative, and collective work. From contributing to special issues to moving the field forward from your specific contexts and methodologies, we want you to be a part of this diverse community of scholars seeking to enhance the intersection of different disciplines, fields, paradigms, contexts, and perspectives.
You and your work belong here. We look forward to supporting your work as editors and allowing us to achieve the aims and scope of Belonging.