This dissertation utilizes an autoethnographic methodology to explore experiences and memories from my own life, while applying a critical cultural and multidisciplinary lens to tell a story about how (un)learning is intertwined with living. By creating a story combining autobiographical elements, science fiction, and cultural critique, this work both draws the reader into reimagining what is possible (Dixon-Romån, 2017), while encouraging the reader to step outside of the conventional modes of academic learning, just as I did in writing it (Sousanis, 2015). This autoethnography includes five encounters inspired by Styres (2017) framework for centering indigeneity in learning (Adams & Jones, 2011; Ellis, 1995). Each encounter engages different embodied experiences (e.g. physical, cognitive, emotive, natural, and spiritual), and aligns it with personal memories that explore the realities and potentialities of trying to belong. This begins with my own self-identities and spirals outwards to include my role amongst various species, with others in society at large, across the planet, and in the Universe most broadly. Specifically, this research asks the question: what is it that I need to (un)learn to belong? This is just one story. It’s my story. So, while it is perhaps not broadly generalizable even for those individuals sharing pieces of my identities that often box us in, the knowledge produced through this type of critical and creative scholarship offers a generative path so “that others can take [it] in and use [it] for themselves… the kind of understanding that make[s] me want to do as well as understand” (Ellis, 2002, p. 401 & 404). By engaging and creatively analyzing content such as: my queerness, my settler colonial positionality, my whiteness, and my complicity in climate change I share the (un)learning I needed to start belonging better in this world. The fifth and final encounter attempts to share an experience of the spiritual all around us, all the time. By imagining a space where all beings are held sacred, it is my hope that we begin to see the possibilities of what we need to (un)learn to belong together.

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The original constructive act of human nature was to make shelter. The original architectural act of human nature was to create place. Nature is made of emotive elemental matter- the horizontal of earth, the vertical of sky, the transcendence of water and the energy of fire. Human beings, alone among the living, have the opportunity to purposefully act. We have squandered this privilege until now, only considering nature where we have not yet built. We must endear ourselves to the source of our existence and through each experience gain nourishment and inspiration. Architecture manifests the spiritual revelation of human intervention into nature. The intimate act of dwelling requires fulfillment and sacrifice. The home should inspire the mind, envelop the soul, nurture the body, and free the spirit. The inhabitant must feel grounded within the foundation, thoughtfully carved into the earth, permeated with the warmth of being embedded, and enriched by the centering focus of a flame within the darkness. The inhabitant must feel elevated without weight upon lightness of frame, touched by a cool breeze, surrounded by canopy and inspired by the heavens. For this journey, the architect must purposefully and poetically place humanity within nature. This is the intimate domain of dwelling between earth and sky. / Master of Architecture

The aim of this study is to explore how middle class residents construct narratives of belonging. The study was conducted in a suburban area in the southern part of Stockholm. This is a neighborhood that undergoes a renewal and status increase. I used a method consisting of auto-photography and subsequent interviews to explore resident’s narratives of belonging. The sampled group was residents with academic exams. Participants were instructed to take five photos of their everyday life in the area and reflect upon these in the interviews. The result was analyzed within a constructive grounded theory frame. The theoretical concepts used take inspiration from Bourdieu’s cultural capital, field and social class. The results are divided into three main cores. The results suggest that a core narrative of constructive affiliation was a useful tool to understand how residents construct a sense of belonging. Residents in this study affiliated with other groups and social classes in the area, through a heightened sense of reflection on their own social position. Residents subscribed to an inclusive version of elective belonging.  Second the construction of a sense of locally based authenticity was a narrative process were they deployed a sense of belonging to the “local” and the small scale community. Third, a sense of rootless territorialism was reflected on in their sense of belonging. This was a process were residents narrative mediated between a stable and a fluid place attachment.

“It’s not just about the money”: the meaning of work for people with severe and enduring mental health problems – an interpretative phenomenological analysis. Aim – to explore the meaning of work for people living with severe and enduring mental health problems. Method - Ten participants were recruited and interviewed initially; eight at six months; four at eighteen months. A longitudinal approach was chosen to facilitate capturing changes in the participants’ life worlds. The method used was interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). Findings - Three overarching themes were identified. Building and maintaining an occupational identity expressed the ways in which participants used occupations as the building blocks of an evolving identity; some viewed work as a socially valued way of doing this. Most of the participants had aspirations towards work, and occupation in a broad sense was seen as an essential component of recovery from mental ill health. Work, and other ways of belonging encapsulated the need to feel connected to others. Many of the participants envisaged working as a way of achieving this. Others had experienced work as isolating and excluding, and had found leaving or changing work roles to be liberating. Work values, personal values; the need for accord reflected the attitudes that participants held about the role of work in their lives, and in society. These views reflected ambivalent feelings about working which often seemed to stem from distressing experiences of work. The longitudinal nature of the study facilitated engagement with the developing narratives and exploration of the changes and consistencies in the participants’ meaning making about work. Conclusion - work may contribute to recovery, as can other forms of occupational engagement. Attention to identity building and fostering a sense of belonging is important. Implications relate to the need for service providers to utilise a flexible approach to occupational participation.

This thesis concerns the making and remaking of localism, by which the thesis refers to the experience of group identity expressed through commitment to community, in rural Northumberland. Specifically, the research investigates the process of becoming, or claiming to be, or being seen as, a local person, and of belonging to a community. It examines how the processes of making, verifying and ascribing such identity claims occur and in what situations and contexts. The research contributes to the sociology of local identity and ‘belonging’, using a broad ethnographic methodology focused around public events. Through participant observation and analysing some relevant documents, it examines how ‘incomers’ and ‘locals’ cooperate to organize and attend these events and how they provide a time/space through which solidarity or otherwise is performed and identities are related to the outside world. The thesis argues against binaries such as public and private, insider and outsider, local and incomer, and instead proposes that there are layers of belonging, gradations of relationship and many points of interconnection. Further, division and cooperation are different ways in which groups and individuals choose to connect, and both are forms of attachment and interrelationship existing along a continuum of belonging. A person can commit and connect over time through volunteering and acquiring local knowledge about the place. However, often it is those who are socially on the fringes, the incomers, who are most assiduous in performing what passes for local. History is important for understanding prevailing social conditions, and some current events were analysed in an historical context. Many commentators have drawn boundaries around their area of study. However this thesis argues that the boundaries, geographic and social, move depending upon context, time, situation and the social location of those involved, including the researcher. The conclusion brings together a set of interconnected findings, and presents the distinctive main arguments about belonging and the local in the thesis. First, birth is not an absolute criterion for belonging and incomers can become ‘local’ in the sense that they can move inwards into their own construction of place. Second, rather than focusing on boundaries alone, the centre of what is bounded is seen as being as important as the boundaries in assessing what it means to be local. Third, while looking into the historic past is a valuable tool in understanding prevailing social conditions, attention must also be paid to the evolving future and how such perceived changes impact on the social. Fourth, there are varied routes to belonging that allow a person to move from outside towards inside. However, the routes to belonging are complicated and cannot be patterned. Fifth, the boundaries are permeable and expand to the global and contract not only to the local, but to the isolated, following an annual rhythm. The result is research which contributes to the sociology of localism and ‘belonging’ in relation to community and self in contemporary Britain.

In this thesis, I examine the ideas of home among Irish-born return migrants who left the Republic of Ireland in the late-1980s/early-1990s for the United States, and then came back at the beginning of the 2000s. Drawing on an analysis of intensive interviews, I elucidate the ways in which my research participants articulate and use the concept of home to negotiate their (re)settlement experiences. The overarching argument of the thesis is that participants’ interpretations represent an alternative to fixed, bounded and exclusionary understandings of home, without necessarily downplaying the longing for a discreet, foundational and originary home. This is important because their accounts of home begin to challenge narrow readings of locality and stable definitions of identity. Moreover, their narratives of home force researchers to address awkward questions about who belongs to particular places, and on what basis claims to membership are made. I develop this argument throughout the thesis by analyzing participants’ descriptions of (re)settlement in the old/new places they inhabit. I show that the majority of participants conventionally justify the return decision as the restoration of a settled sense of home. The actual experience of (re)settlement, however, requires many participants to redefine home upon return. The anxieties associated with the return experience means that home can be simultaneously a space of both homecoming and leavetaking, blurring distinctions between ‘here’ and ‘there’, home and away. In effect, what participants’ narratives draw attention to is the often-overlooked tension between home’s dual meaning: its lived and longed-for aspects. While the reality of return revises the expectations surrounding homecoming, opening out home to broader sets of connections does not necessarily mitigate the longing to belong ‘at home’, to anchor the elusive aspects of home. Participants’ accounts of (re)settlement point towards an accommodation of both grounded and uprooted homes simultaneously: translocally lived, yet longed-for as discreetly-defined. These findings are significant, as they foreground the moored and mobile moments of home as complementary and co-existing rather than conflicting and contending. Return migrants’ (re)settlement experiences offer a productive entry point into investigating this paradoxical nature of home in contemporary societies.

This thesis is concerned with the heart of Caithness, the northernmost region of mainland Scotland. Based on 18 months participant observation in the coastal village of Lybster and the surrounding area, it explores concepts of kinship and belonging. The thesis examines characters, places, and events in both everyday and ritual settings. I trace the creation and maintainence of community, and the construction and blurring of the boundaries of belonging as well as paths of social transformation. I examine how Caithnessians perceive themselves as 'strangers' in their own nation, thus creating increasingly localized ties that bind. Significant in all of this, in a locality where migration has historically been important, is an analysis of how 'others' and their identities play a constitutive role in the self-identification processes of Caithnessians. I consider ascribed and achieved ways of belonging - the genealogical and performative journeys that are involved in fitting into this locality. I examine the contradictions, nuances, and negotiations that are evident in definitions of selves and others and the constitutive relationship between them. All of this is part of a wider investigation into how people conceptualise themselves and others. I argue that what I have called ‘island-mindedness’ characterises the identities of this mainland population and leads to a side-stepping of national identity. In the context of current research on the nation, such ethnographic illumination of the complexity of notions of identity in specific regions is essential for a rounded anthropological understanding of Scotland. By offering a close exploration of a community based on kinship, this thesis aims to illuminate new ways of approaching the nuances of everyday life. I suggest that it is in the encounters of everyday life - more than in claims and categories - that identity work and kinship are most complex and most meaningful.

The scope and principal arguments of the research in this thesis are as follows. This thesis is centered on exploring the identities and sense of belonging of Muslims in Britain. There is a strand of academic research which claims that Muslims in Britain are withdrawn from mainstream Britain because they live in segregated ethnic enclaves, participate in non-mainstream religions, and politically organize themselves via ethnically and religiously homogenous networks. This thesis attempts to go beyond such existing research and advance our understanding of the identities and sense of belonging of Muslims in Britain. Accordingly, the research questions that guide the thesis are: <b>1. What is the strength and relative importance of British identity for Muslims in Britain and what are its drivers? 2. What does ‘belonging to Britain’ mean to Muslims in Britain? 3. What do the identities, British, Pakistani, and Muslim mean to Muslims in Britain, and how easy do they find it to integrate these identities?</b> These questions are dealt with in three main empirical chapters, with the use of a multi-methods approach, combining survey data, cognitive survey methodology interviews, and in-depth qualitative interviews. The first empirical chapter presents regression results, from the Citizenship Survey and Ethnic Minority British Election Study, which confirm the strength of British identity for Muslims and present the various drivers that motivate it. These quantitative findings however do not tell us much about what ‘belonging to Britain’ really means for Muslims. The second empirical chapter delves further into this the concept. I ‘question’ the survey question ‘How strongly do you belong to Britain?’ through 30 cognitive interviews that are used to evaluate survey methodology. This exercise displays two key meanings of the question on belonging to Britain: a ‘cultural’ feeling (at ease) and an ‘affective’ feeling (feel attached). Most respondents interpreted the question as ‘cultural’, reflecting upon the practices, ethical values, and lifestyle that characterises a country. The third empirical chapter takes a look at the identities of Muslims, their national, ethnic, and religious identities through 61 qualitative in-depth interviews. The findings from the structured and unstructured identity questions help to understand the way Muslims in Britain relate to their British, Pakistani, and Muslim identities. The results from the structured identity question took a categorical view of identity as opposed to the themes that emerged from the unstructured identity questions and took a dimensional view of identity. These themes generated a six-group typology of identity with the groups: cultural, unambiguous, emotional, emergent, ambivalent, and none of the above. It was found that identities were not simply additive but were emergent and creative with processes of fusion and mesh. There were some tensions and contradictions in Muslims trying to integrate their different aspects of identity.