Geographies of Belonging

Why belonging? Why geography? As we begin writing this guest editorial an e-mail alert informs us of a call for papers for the Social and Cultural Geography Study Group of the RGS-IBG for 2009 which seeks papers `̀ interested in the way the world works to produce social and cultural difference, engaging with key social science debates concerning identity, subjectivity, citizenship and belonging. '' This e-mail is indicative of the growth of recent research in geography which draws on belonging as a key concept. Sometimes, belonging is at the centre of the analysis but, more often, it is used in a way that implies a common understanding of what belonging is and why belonging is important. Needless to say, no such common understanding exists. Indeed, with the proliferation of belonging in human geography come the inevitable questions: what is belonging, how does one belong, and, importantly, what work does belonging as a concept do? In the introduction to this theme issue on `̀ Geographies of belonging'' we reflect on the notion of belonging, explore the work that belonging does in contemporary social science, particularly human geography, and outline the contributions of the theme issue. Belonging is mobilised in a range of spheres within human geography. Indeed, it is clearly possible to belong in many different ways at many different scales. Belonging has formal and informal aspects, implied, for example, by ideas of formal and informal citizenship and civic identity (Akinwumi, 2006; Alexander, 2008), is associated with exclusion and exclusionary processes (Anderson and Taylor, 2005; Diener, 2007; Ervine, 2008), is negotiated through practice and performance (Dyck, 2005; Mee, 2009; Walsh, 2006), through politics (McNevin, 2006; Trudeau, 2006), and through affect, such as yearning, affective responses to music, and as a response to risk and fear (Alexander, 2008; Duffy et al, 2007). Most commonly, belonging appears in the phrase, a `sense of belonging' (see, for example, Fenster, 2005; Mills, 2006; Walsh, 2006). Here the affective aspects of belonging are mobilised and the focus is on feelings of being in place. As the papers in this issue argue, belonging is an inherently geographical concept. Belonging connects matter to place, through various practices of boundary making and inhabitation which signal that a particular collection of objects, animals, plants, germs, people, practices, performances, or ideas is meant `to be' in a place [the `being' aspect of belonging as Probyn (1996) puts it]. The use of belonging also brings an affective dimension, people `long' (Probyn, 1996) to achieve these types of connections, and to ensure that the ensemble of objects, human and nonhuman animals, practices, and ideas that accords with their version of belonging is achieved or maintained. The intrinsically geographical nature of belonging as a concept may explain some of the appeal of the concept in contemporary human geography. In some work the connections between geography and belonging are the entry point and the focus of study. Geographical languages are mobilised in investigations of `place(s) of belonging' (McCreanor et al, 2006; Nelson and Hiemstra, 2008); `sites of belonging' (Dyck, 2005; Tolia-Kelly, 2006; Witten et al, 2007); `spaces of belonging' (Ehrkamp and Leitner, 2006; Mills, 2006; Nelson, 2007; Valentine and Skelton, 2007); `territory(ies) of belonging' (Tolia-Kelly, 2006), and `landscapes of belonging' (ToliaKelly, 2006; Trudeau, 2006). Such work teases out the complex and shifting geographies Guest editorial Environment and Planning A 2009, volume 41, pages 772 ^ 779