On-going complexities and tensions in society, such as a divisive political climate and increasing diversity, have raised questions on how schools can foster a sense of belonging within the democratic polity. As a result, questions on the meaning of citizenship and citizenship education have received much attention in research, policy, and practice. Xenophobic discourses and anti-migrant rhetorics often lead to the exclusion and marginalization of minoritised people and position these ‘othered’ individuals outside the ‘imagined community’ despite having legal citizenship (Abu El-Haj, 2015; Schmitt, 2010). Multiple studies have illustrated the discrepancy between having legal citizenship and feelings of non-belonging and revealed that young people with migration backgrounds feel that they are often positioned as the ‘other’ (Fleischmann & Phalet, 2018). This suggests that the conditioned experiences of minoritised students can be linked with broader micro- and macro-political power structures. These structures also relate to the school’s cultural norms and power dynamics and thus affect the everyday experiences regarding citizenship and belonging of young people in school.

Although recent research has made significant advances in demonstrating that citizenship is an experiential and negotiated social process in everyday life (Askins, 2016; Kallio et al., 2020), current understandings of citizenship in education are mainly based on adult-centred conceptions of what it means to be a citizen and often omit the feelings and experiences of young people themselves. Moreover, emotional attachments as part of feelings of belonging (i.e. feeling at ‘home’) and citizenship remain underexplored (Kenway & Youdell, 2011). However, emotions are often used to describe and give meaning to feelings of belonging or non-belonging and emphasize the ways young people experience their social world (Ho, 2009). They provide cues to understand the society and the social structures in which we operate (Barbalet, 2001). In this study, emotions are conceptualized, not as internal psychological states of the individual, but rather as social and cultural practices that lead to the formation of social identities, groups, and collectives (Ahmed, 2014).

As the existing body of literature has not fully explored the complex emotional attachments of young people regarding their citizenship and belonging (Jackson, 2016), this study will contribute to the field by its particular focus on the empirical exploration of young people’s emotional attachments and experiences of belonging within the school setting.  Attention to the emotional dimensions of citizenship and belonging can advance critical views on why young people feel that they belong in different ways, as well as the way citizenship is enacted in education. Therefore, I centre the emotional experiences that give meaning to the social relationships and structures that shape the daily lives of young people building on literature from the sociology of emotions (e.g., Clark, 1990; Barbalet, 2001). The emotional politics of belonging within educational settings helps us then to understand how the boundaries of citizenship are constructed that determine who is considered a rightful member in particular places and how young people are encouraged to feel about themselves and others (Zembylas, 2014). The research question in this study is therefore as follows: How do young people construct themselves and others as citizens within an educational setting and what role do emotions play in these experiences of belonging?

The empirical material consists of qualitative focus group data to explore the emotional dynamics of citizenship and belonging and the ways these are negotiated and contested in the everyday space of the school by young people themselves. The focus-group interviews were driven by the idea of ‘pedagogical research’ to empower the participants to actively engage in the research process, fostering the development of their perspectives on societal roles and political stances (Starkey et al., 2014). Although a drawback of this group setting, as opposed to individual interviews, is that power dynamics between students may lead certain students to dominate the discussions, these very dynamics proved to be interesting for my research as well. In total, I conducted fourteen focus groups in three different schools with 89 secondary education students between thirteen and nineteen years old (grade 7 – grade 12). These schools were located in both urban and sub-urban parts of Flanders, the Northern Dutch-speaking region of Belgium. In focus groups, young people attending secondary education in Belgium discussed their citizenship and sense of belonging in and outside school and expressed emotions in different ways, including showing solidarity, coping with differences, and revealing their desire to belong. To facilitate discussion and interaction among the participants, elicitation techniques in the form of interactive starter questions, free listing, and vignettes drawn from topics discussed in class were used to ensure key concerns relating to belonging, citizenship, and potential power relations were raised in each focus group (Barton, 2015). During the focus groups I had an assistant who reported on the emotional expressions of the students. The focus groups were recorded and transcribed, and the observational notes were added to the transcripts, as well as my own reflections on the progression of the focus groups. Attention was paid to how the participants reasoned, negotiated, and reflected upon both their own as well as their peers’ narratives on belonging and citizenship. This involved a focus on the role of the emotions of the participants in navigating the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion with respect to their citizenship and belonging.

Our findings showed that emotional micro-politics of belonging defined one’s social place in the negation of the other, however, it also showed that the students actively sought to expand the boundaries of belonging. The school was an emotional space where students tried to make sense of their social place based on implicit and explicit policies and practices happening in the school context (Clark, 1990). The students in the different focus group conversations drew boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them’ in different ways, but in most examples, it becomes apparent that these boundaries are structurally legitimized by broader power relations, while others are not. The students’ narratives demonstrated an unequal distribution of belonging – i.e. the right to feel at home. At the same time, their narratives demonstrated that shared experiences form a collective ‘we’. Ultimately, the findings suggested that the emotional experience of belonging is a dynamic and fluid process that is done rather than a state of being. This study illustrated how emotional micro-politics of belonging are part of students’ narratives of citizenship and how young people are encouraged to feel about themselves and others in the context of the school. In order for students to critically assess how emotions influence the boundaries of citizenship, a more emotional understanding of citizenship in education is needed. Moreover, a more reflexive stance from educators is also needed to fracture the division of groups formed by collective emotions and move beyond essentialist fixed conceptions of ‘us’ and ‘them’. Instead, educators should encourage students to form flexible and dynamic belongings within and across classroom settings in which the mutuality of emotions has the potential to dismantle conventional power structures and challenge social norms.

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