Non-Belonging: borders, boundaries, and bodies at the interface of migration and citizenship studies

Non-belonging is an undertheorized current in work on migration and citizenship, too often understood as simply the absence of belonging. We define non-belonging as an actively constructed space and logic that entails the denial of personhood, where personhood captures one’s sense of self, one’s capacity to act, as well as the human and citizenship rights tied to this. We suggest that distinct processes interact to foster spaces and logics of non-belonging: (1) bordering through state practices; and (2) boundary formations through representation, with (3) both of these inscribed on bodies. We illustrate our framework through the example of a legal case regarding the repatriation of Dutch women who joined the Islamic State. We also apply our framework to examples from our previous research on Muslim masculinities in Canada and Germany and Turkish mothers in Berlin who circumvent immigrant stigma by sending their children to international schools to show the framework’s utility in analyzing non-belonging writ large.