belonging Archives

‘Am I Less British?’

‘Am I Less British?’ focuses on the children of refugees and immigrants in North London, whose parents migrated from Turkey.

Providing a rich ethnography of the lives of the children, the book studies their sense of identity, belonging and their transnational experiences. It aims to understand how the children position themselves within a range of locations (London, North London and Turkey), where they face class hierarchy, racism and discrimination, and explores how they think about their sense of belonging within the contemporary political context in Britain and Turkey. De-identifying themselves from national identities and holding onto the oppressed identities appear as new forms of resistance in response to racism and exclusion.

The experiences of the young people reflect the complexity of their lives in changing political and social circumstances across the borders of nation-states, and the importance of other categories of identity, including local identities. Overall, the book argues that the intersections of local, national and transnational approaches, the political context through which the lives of young people are framed, and their sophisticated engagement with ideas of race, class, ethnicity and gender, are crucial in understanding their identity formation.

Precarious Motherhood

Precarious Motherhood explores the experiences of racially minoritised mothers living with insecure immigration status and financial hardship in London, UK. It exposes the impact of hostile immigration policies and precarity on mothers’ interpersonal relationships and access to support. The author draws attention to how mothers manage the constraints they face and enact belonging. She then explores the impact on mothers’ couple relationships, friendships, adult kin relationships and faith-based networks. The book underlines the vital role of personal relationships in providing access to resources and support, but also demonstrates how precariously positioned mothers must carefully navigate relational tensions in their everyday lives. It highlights how social infrastructure facilitates relational practices, helping mothers to sustain their children’s wellbeing and their own.

Marriage Matters

Statistics show steep declines in formal partnerships in Uganda. Yet marriage, commitment, love and relationships still matter profoundly to individuals, family, generations, friends and wider society. What does it mean to be married or not married in contemporary Uganda?

Marriage Matters engages with new and classic anthropological theory, gender studies, marriage, relatedness and temporality. Through rich empirical cases, the book examines how partnership, kinship, child filiation and friendship are changing in Uganda, as are ideas about love and commitment, and in doing so contributes to the burgeoning scholarship on marriage and partnership structures in anthropology and beyond.

This volume presents collaborative ethnographies that brings together the voices of scholars from Uganda and Europe to discuss how Ugandan realities are changing and how anthropology has changed as well. Geographically, the volume covers Northern Uganda, affected by long years of civil conflict, and relatively peaceful Eastern Uganda that nevertheless shares many similar social and economic conditions with Northern Uganda. These two different contexts provide a special opportunity to consider the dynamics between marriage, violence, love, commitment, economics and politics.

Compassionate Leadership for School Belonging

In Compassionate Leadership for School Belonging, international scholar and practitioner Kathryn Riley shines the powerful lens of belonging on schools. Belonging is that sense of being somewhere you can be confident you will fit in and feel safe in your identity: a feeling of being at home in a place.

When belonging is a school’s guiding principle more young people at all levels experience a sense of connectedness and friendship, perform better academically, and come to believe in themselves; their teachers feel more professionally fulfilled, their families more accepted.

The originality of this highly readable book lies in its scope. It offers international analysis from the OECD, alongside insights from the author’s extensive research in schools, powerfully supported by observational vignettes and drawings from the children, young people and teachers who have been her co-researchers. This exploration is supported by methodologies, concepts and research tools for use by practitioners, researchers and school leaders.

While contemporary patterns of dislocation, disaffection and exclusion are revealed, the spotlight is firmly on what needs to change and how: the purposeful actions in classrooms and schools; the approaches at system level; and the compassionate forms of leadership that can help create the conditions for school belonging.

In an increasingly uncertain world, this is an urgent book of hope and possibilities.

Belonging and Identity in STEM Higher Education

In Belonging and Identity in STEM Higher Education, leading scholars, teachers, practitioners and students explore belonging and identity in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields, and how this is impacted by disciplinary changes and the post-pandemic higher education context. In STEM fields, positivist approaches and a focus on numerical data can lead to assumptions that they are unemotional, impersonal disciplines. The need for mathematical competency, logical thinking and disciplinary contexts can be barriers to engagement, belonging and success in STEM.

STEM ways of thinking, such as those underpinning abstract and complex mathematics, can form the basis for new ways of conceptualising belonging for both staff and students, going beyond socio-demographic and cultural differences. In this book, chapters and case study contributions analyse what is unique about STEM educational environments for staff and students in the UK, Ireland, Europe, Scandinavia and Asia. The authors examine the role of STEM pedagogies in facilitating belonging, variable impacts across student characteristics and the experiences STEM students face in their higher education experiences. It provides a valuable resource for those working in equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI), STEM educational researchers and practitioners, as well as offering insights for academics and teachers in STEM higher education.