Sense of Belonging
entry by Julie M. Marx, Global Family Expert at Expat Valley
The subjective experience of feeling accepted, valued, and connected within a community, place, or cultural group. In internationally mobile contexts, this is frequently disrupted by relocation and may need to be actively rebuilt across multiple settings.
Comparable terms
Social belonging (research, education) · Community connectedness (social work, destination services) · Inclusion (HR, education — broader organizational usage) · Fitting in (informal — contested; often distinguished from genuine belonging in therapeutic contexts)
Why this matters
Belonging is often the central emotional challenge of mobile life. Its absence shows up as loneliness, disengagement, or acting out, especially in kids. Treating belonging as a core need, not a “nice to have,” changes how we design support.
Cross-references
Cultural Homelessness (Identity & Belonging); Rootlessness (Identity & Belonging); Liminality (Identity & Belonging); Third Culture Kid TCK (Identity & Belonging); Adult Third Culture Kid ATCK (Identity & Belonging); Hidden Immigrant (Identity & Belonging); Querencia (Identity & Belonging); Cultural Identity (Identity & Belonging); Bicultural Identity Integration BII (Identity & Belonging); Cross-Cultural Kid CCK (Identity & Belonging); Ambiguous Loss (Wellbeing & Mental Health); Cumulative Loss (Wellbeing & Mental Health); Unresolved Grief (Wellbeing & Mental Health); Identity Confusion (Wellbeing & Mental Health); Meaning-Making (Wellbeing & Mental Health). These entries collectively trace how belonging is formed and destabilized in internationally mobile lives cultural homelessness, rootlessness, liminality, TCK, ATCK, CCK, and hidden immigrant describe the structural and social conditions under which belonging may be fragile or fractured; cultural identity and BII outline how multiple cultural memberships can be integrated into a coherent sense of self that supports belonging; querencia names the inner experience of refuge and groundedness that many mobile individuals long for when they say they want to “”feel at home””; ambiguous loss, cumulative loss, and unresolved grief capture the layered losses that erode belonging over repeated moves; and identity confusion and meaning-making describe the psychological work of reweaving a sense of who one is, and where and with whom one belongs, after those disruptions.
Sources
The distinction between belonging and fitting in is widely attributed to Brené Brown’s research on vulnerability, documented in: Brown, B. (2010). The Gifts of Imperfection. Hazelden.
For the educational context, see: Goodenow, C. (1993). The psychological sense of school membership among adolescents. Psychology in the Schools, 30(1), 79–90.
« Back