Belonging/ Unbelonging

Feeling a concrete sense of "home" is something many of us take for granted…

- Furaha Asani

THE FEELING OF BEING ROOTED AND GROUNDED in a particular space is hugely important for our physical and mental well-being. Radical psychologist Guilaine Kinouani explains that unjustly losing this rootedness is equivalent to “the subjective experience of losing an anchor.” As someone whose family has always faced immigration struggles, whose present immigration circumstances have been affected by the legacies of colonisation, who has always found it hard to feel comfortable claiming any one nationality or culture, and who has constantly been on the move for my career, it wasn’t until I found Kinouani’s essay that I could crystallise my own feelings about sense of belonging and unbelonging, and my desire to be anchored.

As an immigration justice advocate based in the UK, I have had the privilege of having stories shared with me by migrants from different parts of the world—most of whose experiences resonate with the theme of uprootedness and unbelonging at some point or other in their lives.

It is not for me to say that everyone who is a migrant has or will experience this phenomenon, nor that those who are born in their ancestral lands will not experience it (especially people of colour and any other marginalised individuals). Yet, nationality and migration have a significant impact on our feelings of safety and security and, many times, on our ability to form stable homes.