The need to belong to communities is a basic human need and the notion of belonging is central to how we define who we are. But belonging to a national community is not always clear-cut. The paradox of belonging to the German community was made evident in 2005 when a census category—‘persons with a migration background’—was introduced. The new category served to cast some people to the community’s periphery. Instead of ‘Germans’ and ‘foreigners’, the census now records ‘Germans’ and ‘persons with a migration background’. Included in the latter category are German citizens. Germans with a(n obvious) connection to elsewhere who were once counted as ‘German’ are now placed in the newly established census category and counted together with foreigners. This ethnographic study examined how ordinary Germans conceive of Germanness and who they imagine their German community to include. The study asked: What makes a person German? Analysis was couched in historical and contemporary contexts that inform the data. To avoid being mired a priori in the notion of a German Volk, people of various backgrounds having membership in the German nation-state were asked who they take to be ‘German’ and where they draw their lines around the imagined German community. The research data suggests that a penchant for prestige which has long characterized German nationalism continues to influence who is seen as German. Moreover, the boundaries around the characteristics deemed prestigious are guarded by people who feel themselves, subjectively, to be members of the community since they benefit as individuals from the perceived high status of the nation of which they are a member.

One of the most significant challenges the globalized world encounters is how to build a society that is more at peace with diversity and cosmopolitanism. Further, in a world where highly unequal power relations and a vast plethora of inequalities persist, interrogating and resisting inequalities is key. From this context, this study focuses on interrogating inequalities in addressing an equality agenda highlighting a thesis of belonging; the human need for belonging and security in that belonging and the human right to have these needs satisfied (UDHR, 1948). A thesis of belonging relates to an innate human need for belonging (Maslow, 1943) and it is argued in this thesis that this innate human need for belonging is very important and very much connected to many fundamental human rights which should be driven much more through equality focused social movements and the laws. Clearly, where human rights are not being upheld then action must be taken to uphold them. The research findings of this thesis show the relevance of a thesis of belonging and the relevance of two core theories which have a connection, a marxist theory of racism and a social identity theory of racism. A marxist understanding of racism clearly delineates the inequalities capitalism produces and in this thesis while it is not argued that a marxist understanding of racism alone completely explains all varieties of racism, through a significant number of participants' discourses this thesis shows how capitalism often appears to be a driving force behind discrimination made on the basis of ethnicity. In addition, a significant number of participants' discourses in this thesis also point towards a social identity theory of racism which indicates the significance of what a social group affords an individual where a sense of belonging derived from affiliation and acceptance in group membership provides a feeling of self esteem and security (Tajfel and Turner, 1979; Breakwell, 1986; West, 1993, Aboud, 2008). Importantly, Tajfel (1981) emphasises how crucial it is to interrogate the social and economic context of discrimination and so here is where social identity theory relates to a marxist theory of racism.

Building offerings, artefacts or bones that had been placed under or within house features, are considered evidence of rites associated with house construction, remodelling or abandonment, and are an archaeological phenomenon that was common throughout European prehistory. This dissertation focuses on interpreting building offerings dating to the Viking Age in Iceland and Scotland. Each find of this type is unique, which poses a challenge for archaeological investigations that often lack the interpretive framework needed to make comparisons between sites. This dissertation critically refines the frameworks of previous studies of similar types of deposits in AngloSaxon Britain and Scandinavia in order to fill this gap in research and discuss the purpose of houserites. The frameworks of behavioural and cognitive archaeology indicate that the performance of house-rites played a role in the construction of the house as the centre of the world-view of Vikingage people. House-rites are situated as prescriptive behaviours that negotiated perspectives of space throughout the residential life-cycle by adding to house materiality. This refined interpretive paradigm is then applied to a comparative survey of Viking-age houses and farmsteads from Iceland and Scotland. In the North Atlantic region, house-rites appear to have been performed in order for Norse people to reimagine their place in the world. The practical elements of the tradition were altered based on the relevant cultural frameworks and specific geo-political contexts to which Norse people were migrating in the Viking Age. In Iceland, people utilised displays of generosity and skills as providers during house-rites to construct an association between social relationships and residential space. The house itself had agency in situating people both within the landscape and the community. In Norse settlements in Scotland, Scandinavian people were relating themselves directly to the symbols used by native peoples through the use of personal objects in the performance of houserites, integrating their new environment into their mentalities. In Scandinavia, house-rites were a long-standing tradition, leading to a well-established, carefully negotiated sense of identity within the landscape. The Norse people who migrated into the North Atlantic region during the Viking Age were leaving this well-established sense of place. This intensified the climate of uncertainty regarding their place in the world, leading to the negotiation of mentalities through the discursive dynamics of house-rites in altered contexts.

The following is a collection of six short stories written between 2014 and 2016. While the short stories are not connected, they tend to grapple with issues of grief and belonging. Characters who struggle to name their feelings, to inhabit them, and yet feel them nonetheless, populate these pages. There is also a theme of fantastical bodies in some of the stories--women who levitate and little boys who suffer heart problems when they feel too much joy. The interplay between emotion and physical ailment is exaggerated and dramatized in these instances.

This study is conceptualized within the broad context of a national education system struggling to produce within learners either the academic outcomes required for economically productive adulthood or the social and moral outcomes required for active and responsible citizenship. Feeling a sense-of-belonging is a basic human need and crucial for successful communal living as it fosters solidarity. A complicating factor is the notion that diversity negatively affects solidarity. As the only remaining compulsory social institution, schools provide the ideal location for instilling the values required for solidarity. Additionally, since education occurs in a social setting, a sense-of-belonging facilitates the environments required for effective learning. The study adopts the position that both social (relationships) and non-social (structures and resources) components of the “school climate” (a term used to denote the whole-school context) affect the development of a sense-of-belonging in learners. The questions are posed: which aspects of school climate show the greatest effect on sense-of-belonging? What are the effects of diversity and minority group status? Adopting a structural model developed by Cemalcilar (2010), a quantitative methodology is used to measure various aspects of learners’ experiences in terms of their levels of subjective satisfaction and identifies the effects of the aspects on sense-of-belonging. Further, the relationships are examined in relation to the effects of components of the concept of diversity. Brofenbrenner’s ecological theory of human development (1979) and various normative functionalist theories of social control, primarily those of Hirschi (1969), are applied to explain variations in satisfaction and sense-of-belonging. Regression analysis indicates that the strongest determinants on learners’ satisfaction with the school climate are the relationships with peers and teachers, and the quality of the campus and resources. The need for emotional bonds characterised by trust and respect emerges as vital. An unexpected result is that social and structural satisfaction as conceptualized in the model do not significantly account for variations in sense-of-belonging. The learners do, however, report relatively high levels of sense-of-belonging, so alternate sources of the sensation not directly measured by the model are presented as possible explanations (e.g. extra-murals and gangs). The results do not support the hypothesis that diversity negatively affects sense-of-belonging and few significant effects were found for belonging to a minority group. Concluding remarks highlight the need for government to continue the improvement of the structural conditions of our schools and the greater need for an emphasis on respect - Ubuntu - in the hidden and visible curricula to foster improvements in both academic and civil outcomes. / Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2011

In this study, through a group of children’s critical inquiries about migrant belonging, I aimed to understand migrant children’s epistemic privilege and generate a counter-narrative against the predominant problem-based framing of migrant children. To achieve the research purpose, the guiding questions I set forth are the following: 1. What issues, problems, and questions regarding migrant belonging do a group of migrant children bring to the surface? 2. How do the children investigate those issues, problems, and questions? 3. What role does the researcher play in the child-led critical inquiry process? To address the questions, 33 critical inquiry sessions were held from 2019 to 2020 in an afterschool class in a Korean elementary school. At the intersection of practitioner research tradition and a participatory approach, this study oriented itself toward reflexive, action-oriented research. The findings suggest that the children’s engagement in critical inquiries brought methodological dilemmas, posing questions to my assumptions about the research topics as well as to my plans, and shifted research design. These complexities caused by children demonstrated that critical inquiries involve generative possibilities wherein not only children can generate knowledges but researchers also reconstruct one’s preconceptions and better understand the research topics, ultimately developing better research design. In addition, children demonstrated their insights about migrant belonging by reconceptualizing belonging from a migrant Joseonjok child’s perspective. The children also taught people how othering practices were at work in Korean society and impacted their belonging. Based on the generated knowledges, the children, on the one hand, created counter-narratives and informed us about how to rethink migrant belonging in South Korea and, on the other hand, attempted to counteract othering practices, which let me reconsider what “action” would mean in the critical inquiries. With these findings, I discuss migrant children’s epistemic privilege, particularly regarding their insights about the nation-building project in South Korea, how children navigate the critical inquiries, and researcher’s role in the critical inquiries. The discussion generates implications for researchers in the field of curriculum studies and qualitative methodology and for practitioners and curriculum designers who conduct critical inquiries with children.

Even within counseling psychology’s multicultural literature, attention to individuals of Arab descent remains narrow (Awad, 2010; Abdel-Salam, 2019). Despite counseling psychologists’ goals regarding multiculturally proficiency, the dearth of systematic empirical research on the counseling of Arab Americans remains conspicuous. The present study attempts to fill this gap by exploring the impact of racial ambiguity and legal invisibility on Arab Americans’ sense of belonging and well-being. This exploratory consensual qualitative research (CQR) investigation analyzed interview data from 13 non-veiled Arab American women. The interview probed their reactions to Arab Americans’ legal invisibility in the US, queried how they believed White people versus people of color racially perceived them, and examined their subsequent emotional responses and coping strategies. The study’s results revealed participants’ feelings of invisibility, invalidation, and hurt when they were not recognized as a person of color (PoC) and brought the participants’ perpetual experience of exclusion to the forefront. The results not only have implications for professional practice and education but also for policy. Specifically, this study lends support to Arab and Middle Eastern North African (MENA) advocacy efforts for census recognition, as this acknowledgment of the Arab/MENA community would foster a sense of belonging not only among other PoC but also within US society as a whole.

With unique historical, political, and social perceptions, the experiences of refugees, and later, their children, contribute to a more complex narrative of remembrance, citizenship, and belonging in the United States. Often framed as creating a disconnect between generations, intergenerational trauma may be addressed by surfacing different forms of affective and embodied remembrance. Recognizing the unique identities and subjectivities that the second-generation, Southeast Asian American (SEAA) population embodies (and the implications that those have for how the U.S. perceives and produces itself), this project engages narrative inquiry and participatory visual methodologies to explore how the children of Southeast Asian (SEA) refugees make meaning of their family histories and themselves through negotiating generational memories. This project shows that SEAA young people are actively engaging with the legacies of their families and communities as they move through the world. Through a series of individual interviews, participant creations, a whole group sharing circle, and a group co-created artifact, my analysis shows the ways that SEAA continually look inward and turn outward, seeking to understand, build, and re-member as they negotiate generational memories. As SEAA move toward continuity through a deep recognition and, ultimately, acceptance of rupture, they engage in healing practices. Drawing from the ways that a feminist refugee epistemology asserts the refugee as knower and centers their rich, complicated daily experiences and the ways that healing justice centers the transformation of institutions and relationships to facilitate individual and collective healing, this project offers continued opportunities to theorize the connections between historical understandings and how young people with legacies of displacement see themselves as actors in relation to those around them.

Support for far-right ideas and parties continues to be widespread despite significant efforts to curb it. Even in Germany, a country that underwent unusually far-reaching reforms after the Holocaust and the defeat of the Nazi regime, and that is often used as an example for how to deal with a fraught past, the threat of the far right gaining power is looming large and attitudes associated with far-right support continue to be widespread. This dissertation examines sources of persistence and change with respect to far-right support, using post-WWII Germany as a case. I used a mixed-methods approach, combining statistical analysis of observational data with in-depth qualitative analysis of archival data and an experiment. The three studies highlight the potentials and limits of three avenues for change: the political incorporation of right-leaning voters into mainstream center-right parties, education reforms to overcome far-right ideology, and interventions that inform people about past atrocities and injustices. Chapter 1 provides an overview of three pathways identified across the social sciences through which the past shapes social and political outcomes in the present: institutional path dependence, political socialization, and collective memory. I explain how these three pathways relate to the issue of far-right support. Chapter 2 draws on historical and contemporary election data and social statistics as well as secondary sources by historians to examine sources of regional variation in the support for far-right parties in Germany over time. I show how differences in the political incorporation of right-leaning displaced Germans resulted in different regional trajectories of far-right support. Where the center-right party was firmly embedded in the local social milieu and focused on its pre-existing voter base, it remained closed to right-leaning displaced voters, and far-right support persisted. Where the party could not build on a pre-existing voter base and collaborated with other parties on the right, it broadly incorporated conservative constituencies across social differences, resulting in a decline in far-right support. Chapter 3 is based on the qualitative analysis of 125 school student essays from 1950s West Germany about the German nation and the idea of an integrated Europe. I investigate ideas about belonging and supremacy among the first generation that grew up after WWII and the Holocaust and that was educated following the Allies’ comprehensive re-education efforts. I show how school students defined German-ness and European-ness based on ideas of shared culture, criticizing nationalism and largely embracing a joint European identity. At the same time, this move to cultural, as opposed to racial, conceptions of belonging, as well as the emphasis on Europe as a meaningful, shared category of belonging, did not preclude claims of superiority both within Europe as well as vis-à-vis other parts of the world. Chapter 4, a co-authored study, uses an original survey experiment to test the effectiveness of confronting people with different forms of factual information about a past atrocity that the national majority group was implicated in, for improving their attitudes towards minoritized groups and mobilizing them for symbolic justice and action against discrimination today. We randomly assigned German participants one of three prototypical representations of the Holocaust or a neutral control condition text. Results indicate that all three conditions are overall effective and that the personal story condition is especially effective for far-right supporters. Chapter 5 concludes with a discussion of implications and limitations, and suggests directions for future research.

Thesis (MPhil)--Stellenbosch University, 2014. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: House, home, to be at-home-in-the-world and the need for a mobile home that accompanies us through our everyday life, are concepts upon which this thesis is built. I am of opinion that the constant mobility of globalization and each individual’s journey of finding a place to belong to, dictates a complementary conceptualization of a home. My study focuses on the possibilities that books present, physically and psychologically, as a possible complementary term to a house and a home. The theoretical structure of this thesis is based on Doreen Massey and Martin Heidegger’s view on modes of habitation. They outline a framework in which this phenomenological text of an everyday phenomenon, namely: to-be-at-home-in-the-world, is discussed. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Huis, tuiste, tuis-wees-in-die-wêreld en die behoefte na ’n mobiele tuiste wat saam swerf deur ons alledaagse leefwêreld, is onderwerpe waarmee hierdie tesis bemoei is. Ek is van mening dat hedendaagse mobiliteit gevind in globalisasie en soektog na ’n eie plek, vra na 'n komplementêre konseptualisering van tuiste. My studie fokus op boeke en hul fisiese en psigiese eienskappe om as moontlike komplementêre tuiste tot huis en tuiste aangewend te word. Doreen Massey en Martin Heidegger se teorieë rondom wyses van bewoning op aarde dien as spilpunt wat deur aanvullende teoretici gekoppel word aan 'n fenomenologiese teks wat die alledaagse ervaring van tuis-wees-in-die-wêreld op die voorgrond plaas.