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Abstract

Belonging has become a hot topic in recent years. Popularly described as a fundamental human need, belonging has been associated with a multitude of positive effects on health, well-being, achievement, and adjustment. Policies, practices, and metrics intended to promote belonging are now widely implemented in schools, workplaces, and political institutions. While dominant narratives about belonging predominantly frame it as ubiquitously positive and teleological, many contradictions and silences remain within. Issues of power are conspicuously absent in conversations about belonging, and the choice not to belong is rarely acknowledged. In this paper, I use critical theory and layered account autoethnography to interrogate the implications and power dynamics that surround dominant narratives of belonging. How do structures of power mediate our access to and experience of so-called belonging? What narratives are dominant in shaping our understanding of belonging, and what alternative narratives might be silenced as a result? What are the implications of those dominant narratives, and what do we risk when we fail to question them? Using Michel Foucault’s analysis of power, Erich Fromm’s framework of having and being, and Slavoj Žižek’s metaphor of the post-modern permissive parent, I show that dominant narratives of belonging enact emotional violence by prescribing belonging under the threat of dehumanization. Building upon an unfolding of belonging as agentic, desire-driven, and grounded in the present, I propose belonging-as-relationship, which makes room for the choice not to belong as both an expression of agency and a vehicle for resistance. Finally, I argue that the responsibility and expectation to belong should not fall upon individuals. Instead, those who are in structural positions of power must create inclusive and responsive conditions that are favorable to organic experiences of belonging. This study invites readers to reflect on the ways dominant narratives have shaped their own lived experiences, and advocates for a critical understanding of belonging that resists appropriation as tool for compliance and upholds its agentic and empowering potential.