Sense of belonging benefits children of all ages as it gives them emotional security, boosts relationships with others, shapes their identity and agency (Halse, 2018). Over the past decades, a growing body of literature has focused on what it means for students to have a sense of school belonging and how this relates to academic outcomes and well-being. Although children’s learning and wellbeing is often the central focus of these claims, little is known about young children’s own perspectives and understanding of the concept of belonging. Also, literature on the experiences of different ethnic minoritized groups and how they feel like they belong or don't belong in school is scarce and mainly focuses on how schools foster a sense of belonging (DeNicolo et al., 2017; Di Stefano, 2017) and not on how the children experience it.

Studies have found that minoritized children’s sense of belonging is at risk in mainstream school and that monolingual bias and assimilationist practices significantly affect the feelings of belonging of ethnic minority youth in mainstream schools (Van Der Wildt et al., 2017). Next to these mainstream schools a large part of minoritized pupils attend supplementary schools, which are organized by volunteers in the weekend ( 45% in Flanders see Coudenys et al, under review). In these schools the pupils usually learn their heritage tongue, get acquainted with cultural traditions and meet up with peers (Burman & Miles, 2018; Creese & Martin, 2006). Within the supplementary school the mainstream narratives are displaced, and pupils’ heritage language is central to the pedagogical project (Simon, 2018) . Simultaneously, in these surroundings all their classmates share a migration background and initial research has shown that such schools can foster a sense of belonging when mainstream schools cannot (Kayama & Yamakawa, 2020). Therefore, supplementary schools are interesting spaces to dissect how minoritized children experience sense of belonging in both their mainstream and supplementary school context.

In this study, we examine how children conceptualize and articulate their sense of belonging from their own viewpoints. We aim to identify the contextual and layered experiences of belonging of children attending both mainstream and supplementary education. We interview primary schoolchildren in their supplementary school. We selected two cases: A Russian language heritage school and an Arabic school in the superdiverse setting of the city of Antwerp, in Flanders. Flanders has a strong monolingual tendency in its mainstream schools (Agirdag, 2010; Pulinx et al., 2017) whereas in the supplementary schools bilingualism is encouraged and heritage language is nurtured. The Russian and Arabic language school were chosen because they both welcome pupils from varying background, which makes them interesting to study sense of belonging against a background of ethnic diversity and linguistic diversity.

The research question we hope to answer is:

How do minoritized pupils conceptualize sense of belonging against their experiences of attending both supplementary and mainstream schooling in Flanders?

We move away from static and essentialist ideas of belonging and define belonging as dynamic and highly contextualized. This means that students experience belonging in diverse ways and that these experiences may vary from place to place (e.g., in the mainstream school and the supplementary school), depending on interactions between teachers and students, participation in certain activities and linguistic and cultural policies and practices.  The purpose of this study is to understand the contextual and layered experiences of belonging of minoritized children attending both mainstream and supplementary education in Europe, in which these topics to a large extent remain underresearched. These findings can give us insight in how children construct belonging which can impact future policies aimed at enhancing sense of belonging for all children. 

We conducted thirteen semi structured (group) interviews with 29 students in total in their supplementary school. The students were free to decide to come to the interview alone, or together. Most of the students came in pairs, some came alone and sometimes three students came together. That the students could decide to take part and in which constellation was important to ensure that they would feel most comfortable. Open ended interviews are best suited for explorative approach which includes the students’ nuanced perceptions. In working with minoritized pupils who have varying Dutch (reading) skills, an explorative qualitative approach is the most inclusive. The students were aged between 9 and 13 and all went to a regular Flemish elementary school throughout the week. Some students were relatively new to the supplementary school and other had been coming for years. In the interviews the students were asked about their experience and their perception of belongingness in each school. The interviews were transcribed and anonymized. Case selection Both supplementary schools were selected because of their diverse character. Both schools teach heritage language classes in Russian and Arabic respectively. The Russian school hosts pupils from Ukrainian, Belarusian, Chechen descent. In the Arabic schools there are Syrian, Moroccan, and Sudanese descent. The schools, contrary to Flemish mainstream schools, have a bilingual focus and their goal is to nurture pupils’ multiple identities. Coding tree For the data analysis we used reflexive thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke). In a first phase of familiarization, we immersed ourselves in the data while keeping the research question in mind. Each researcher then generated codes inductively after which these codes were compared and refined. Subsequently, we created candidate themes by clustering codes of similar meaning. Focusing on the central concept of belongingness we then reevaluated the themes and defined them, adding both subthemes and overarching themes. Class climate (Bullying, Conflicts, Tabu topics) Class organization (Class size, Discipline, Intervention) Negative Experiences (Exclusion, Othering) Friendship (Making friends, Shared History, Homophily) These are the codes and subcodes we used in the last coding stage.

We find that for young children, who have not often been interviewed about their experience of sense of belonging that shared background did not play a great role. Rather, language use and homophily in interests impacted their friendships and therefore also their sense of belonging. Overall, for these young pupils’ sense of belonging is entangled with a sense of friendship. More than the need to feel connected to the school or the teachers the need for connectedness to their peers made that they felt a sense of (non)-belonging. Specifically, the sense of being accepted was related with belonging. Suggesting a more passive approach towards the concept than expected. For the pupils the feeling of being accepted was enough to feel that they belonged. This feeling of acceptance is closely related to language. For the children whose first language was Dutch a sense of belonging came more easily in the mainstream school. For the children whose first language was Arabic or Russian, sense of belonging was more prevalent in the supplementary school. These findings should be understood in a context in which language and school language especially is highly politicized. For Dutch learners, who might struggle with a sense of belonging in mainstream schooling, a strict monolingual approach, as is common in schools in Flanders, might harbor an even more alienating climate.

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