In recent years the notion of inclusive education, as the effort to provide equal access and opportunities for diverse learner populations, has been often criticised as it would not give sufficient consideration to the voice of those targeted by inclusive policy and practices. Hence, the idea of belonging has emerged as an alternative approach that can better capture and express the personal experience of being included (or excluded) in educational settings. However, while belonging has helped us achieve a more nuanced and first-hand perspective of the way the inclusion process is actually perceived - e.g. by students from a migrant or disability background - its adoption as an interpretive lens through which inclusion can be understood and developed is not without risk. First of all, belonging is connected to the question of membership, which entails a binary logic aiming to define the group boundaries by identifying legitimate members. Accordingly, belonging can easily lead to authenticity discourses, as the categorisation of desired features is always coupled with the rejection of those unwanted (e.g. disability or skin colour). Secondly, investigation on belonging as an educational path usually adopts an individual level of analysis in order to underline the value of the student viewpoint in developing a sense of belonging to the educational environment. However important, the emphasis on the individual track risks overshadowing the pivotal dimension of inclusion as a collective - more than individual - endeavour based on building a shared sense of community. Thirdly, the concept of belonging implicitly stresses the subjective element of the learner experience. While it puts into the foreground important psychological aspects, like identification and personal wellbeing, it underestimates the material aspects involved in promoting inclusion in the educational settings. Subjectivity is always embodied and embedded in a material context. Both bodies and contexts are crucial for our understanding of inclusion processes as acts of resistance. Fourthly, belonging risks bringing back an educational model based on a narrow view of adaptation. The success of inclusive policy and practices should be measured not only by how much the student feels s/he belongs to the school, but also how much the school developed a sense of ownership concerning the student. Adaptation can only be reciprocal in inclusive education. By providing a critical analysis of the belonging theory, the contribution aims to promote a better understanding of the inclusive strategies targeted to students from a migrant or disability background.

Brodsky, A. E., & Marx, C. M. (2001). Layers of identity: Multiple psychological senses of community within a community setting. Journal of community psychology, 29(2), 161-178. Case, A. D., & Hunter, C. D. (2012). Counterspaces: A unit of analysis for understanding the role of settings in marginalized individuals’ adaptive responses to oppression. American journal of community psychology, 50(1-2), 257-270. Chin, C. (2019). The concept of belonging: Critical, normative and multicultural. Ethnicities, 19(5), 715-739. Fuchs, L. M., Jacobsen, J., Walther, L., Hahn, E., Ta, T. M. T., Bajbouj, M., & von Simonsen, K. B. (2018, March). What it means to (not) belong: A case study of how boundary perceptions affect second‐generation immigrants’ attachments to the nation. Sociological Forum, 33, 1, 118-138. Slee, R. (2019). Belonging in an age of exclusion. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 23(9), 909-922. Vandenbussche, H., & De Schauwer, E. (2018). The pursuit of belonging in inclusive education–insider perspectives on the meshwork of participation. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 22(9), 969-982. Yuval-Davis, N. (2011). The politics of belonging: Intersectional contestations. Sage.