Fractional belonging: The experience of Bulgarian and Zimbabwean migrants living in Australia

Abstract

This article outlines a phenomenon that emerged from a research project investigating meanings of ‘home’ and ‘belonging’, and how these shape the later-life plans among Bulgarian and Zimbabwean immigrants living in Australia. The study involved thirty-one adult participants, evenly divided between the two groups, and used a qualitative approach. Interviews were analysed through autoethnographic and phenomenological lenses, allowing for an in-depth exploration of participants’ experiences. A key finding is that while many participants felt ‘at home’ in certain social, cultural, or professional contexts, their sense of belonging was not universal or consistent across all areas of their lives. They also experienced ‘unbelonging’ in certain social or situational contexts. The term ‘fractional belonging’ was introduced to describe this fragmented, complex connection to a place. The article situates these findings within existing theories on belonging, social behaviour, and discourse, aiming to enrich the literature on migrant experiences. By highlighting the multifaceted and sometimes contradictory ways in which immigrant groups experience belonging, the article advocates for more nuanced and culturally responsive approaches in social and community work with migrant populations. Such approaches would foster empathy and compassion—qualities that are vital for effectively engaging with migrant populations and supporting their successful integration.

Introduction

Belonging is elusive. The hamster running inside a spinning treadmill never arrives: the faster it runs, the more rapidly the treadmill spins—without yielding a point of arrival. And yet, some ‘gains’ are made. Over time, the hamster develops stamina and becomes more habituated to continuous running. We use this metaphor to explore four intertwined dimensions of the phenomenon we have labelled here as ‘fractional belonging’. The first is the idea of an ongoing state of ‘striving to belong’—a process that does not necessarily culminate in a sense of ‘full belonging’, as conceptualized by Ignatieff (2001). At the same time, some incremental gains are made. Over time, certain social, cultural, or interactive spaces (or moments) become more ‘navigable’—adding to a growing repertoire of ‘habitable’ spaces or moments. Thirdly, the process of ‘striving to belong’, itself, often translates into an enduring ‘liminal state’—or an ongoing state of ‘in-betweenness’, which becomes the norm for many adult migrants. Finally, it appears that ‘striving to belong’ is often driven by forces or factors that transcend volitional human agency. Just as the hamster has to run, not because it wants to, but because the spinning surface underneath its feet compels it to, many ‘fractionally belonging’ migrants make life-shaping decisions that are dictated by unfolding life circumstances. We discuss this aspect with reference to actor network theory, as proposed by Latour (2007). Prior to examining these four main themes in detail, we first outline the research methodology applied in this investigation.

Methodology

Our initial aim was to investigate ‘belonging’ and how it shapes later-life plans among adult Zimbabwean and Bulgarian immigrants living in Australia. The decision to investigate the experiences of these ethnically and culturally distinct migrant communities stemmed from collegial conversations that revealed many shared experiences between us as representatives of these communities. Thus, we formulated our research agenda partly from an auto-ethnographic perspective. We undertook a scoping literature review focusing (inter alia) on adult migrant experiences of belonging or ‘unbelonging’ and how these shape later-life planning. We applied for ethics approval from the Federation University Australia Higher Education Research Ethics Committee to conduct semi-structured interviews with adult Zimbabwean and Bulgarian immigrants who have lived in Australia for at least ten years, but who were already eighteen years old (or older) when they first arrived in Australia. The requirement for participants to have lived in Australia for a minimum of ten years was to ensure that they had established themselves and their families as permanently residing in the country and undergone the initial experiences of acculturation. We used the snowball technique to recruit participants via word of mouth or social media platforms such as WhatsApp or Facebook. In total, we interviewed thirty-one adult immigrants (approximately fifteen from each immigrant group) over a twelve-month period. The interviews were conducted face-to-face or via online platforms such as Zoom or Microsoft Teams with the informed written or verbal consent of all participants. The interviews were conducted in English or mixtures of English and Shona (one of the main languages spoken in Zimbabwe) or Bulgarian. This was possible as we each interviewed participants from our own communities. Each interview lasted approximately one hour. The interviews were recorded, transcribed, collated, and deidentified before being analysed. We used thematic analysis to identify emerging themes the data. In our analysis, we adopted an interpretive phenomenological stance, which acknowledges that researchers are reflexive and they bring their own worldviews, cultural backgrounds, and personal experiences to the interpretive process. This stance emphasizes understanding human experience ‘…from the perspective of the conscious person undergoing…[that] experience’ (Giorgi 2009: 4), thereby giving priority to the viewpoints, narratives, and ontologies of the participants themselves (Grbich 2009; van Manen 1984).

The interview data confirmed that there were many commonalities in the experiences of Zimbabwean and Bulgarian participants. A key theme was the almost permanent state of liminality or ‘in-betweenness’, which one participant described as ‘…life in in the seam between the country of origin and the new living environment’. This description resonated with our own experiences as culturally and linguistically diverse academics teaching in a social work program at an Australian university. It underscored the duality between our ‘insider’ professional roles and the sense of marginality we experienced in other social or interactive spaces. The research evolved beyond a scholarly inquiry, transforming into a personal journey of exploration and reflection. As we engaged with the participants, we were able to explore our own struggles with displacement, integration, and identity—and to reflect on the complexities of adapting to a new living environment.

The following sections discuss four key themes related to the phenomenon of ‘fractional belonging’ which emerged from the interviews. These themes explore how individuals experience and negotiate their sense of belonging in contexts of migration and cultural transition.

Perpetually ‘striving to belong’: the elusiveness of an arrival point

The process of resettling and establishing a new sense of belonging is necessarily complex and uncertain (Amit and Bar-Lev 2015). As Bacon (2019) has suggested, the question of belonging begs additional questions on what meaningful inclusion is. Factors to consider include overall life satisfaction; the reasons for relocation; religious freedom and fluency in the local language (Amit and Bar-Lev 2015). Tzanelli (2011) and Appadurai (1990) describe resettling in the era of late modernity as navigating intertwined domains that include ethonoscapes (i.e. mixtures of people from different origins); technoscopes (flows and configurations of new or emerging technologies); financescapes (new monetary and economic systems); mediascapes (cultural industry formations) and ideoscapes (systems of ideas and beliefs). Bourdieu (1991) anticipated this notion by theorizing the social landscape as carved into multiple ‘fields’—each of which operates according to its own ‘internal logic’. Thus, immigrants navigate multiple social fields rather than ‘assimilate’ into a monolithic living environment. As individuals navigate these fields, they draw from their prior habitus, which refers to the durable dispositions, tendencies, and ways of thinking, acting, and perceiving that they acquired from their upbringing and past life experiences. In that regard, diverse forms of ‘cultural capital’ are required to navigate the various social fields. Noble (2013) amplifies Bourdieu’s ideas by introducing the concept of embodied capacities, emphasizing that migrants navigating new social fields need to develop new sets of behaviours, including physical and bodily attributes, in order to fit with the norms and expectations of their host communities.

Interestingly, some participants reflected on this theme during the interviews:

JK: We have settled in Australia. But that needs to be qualified. It’s not the same way we were settled when we lived in Zimbabwe. Back there, you could move to any part of the country—or mix with any group of people, and not feel you were out of place. Here, belonging is conditional. It depends on where you are, who you are with and what you are doing. Certainly, there are times or spaces where we feel at home e.g., when attending community gatherings, at work (where everyone knows us well) and of course, in the privacy of our homes. However, there are other spaces or moments or activities during which we become self-conscious—we do not fully or really belong—and we feel we are being gazed upon or looked at like we are outsiders or intruders. I’m not sure if this has to do with appearance, especially skin colour, with language for example accent or with cultural mannerisms. But we do attract this attention—and feel ‘quite alien’ in some spaces.

Another participant, TM described this experience more succinctly: ‘I always experience moments or situations that remind me I’m a visitor to Australia. Our generation is a product of Zimbabwe that will always feel ‘transplanted’ - I don’t think we can ever fully belong. Our kids are different—they are like exotic plants that have germinated and grown on Australian soil—so they feel much, much more at home in this environment’.

These statements resonate with Noble’s (2013) notion that ‘belonging’ is highly complex—and sometimes requires ‘bodily transformations’ alongside cultural, ontological, geographical, and linguistic adaptations. Gee (1991: ix) applies a discursive lens to this complexity when he characterizes ‘full inclusion’ within a ‘discourse community’ as mastery of specific

…ways of behaving, interacting, valuing, thinking, believing, speaking, and often reading and writing that are accepted as instantiations of particular roles by specific groups of people.

Blommaert (2005, 2007) goes further to argue that immigrants need to navigate (and master) new ‘orders of indexicality’. This is the idea that ways of using language (i.e. particular accents, registers, dialects, etc.) normatively index specific social personae, roles, and statuses. Thus ‘…one speaks as a man, lawyer, middle-aged European, asylum seeker and so forth’ (Blommaert 2007: 117). Normative indexicalities of language, however, differ from one part of the so-called ‘global village’ to the other. Thus, what indexes ‘middle-class’ ways of using English in London would be different from what indexes ‘middle-class’ ways of using English in Lagos or in Nairobi (Blommaert 2007). Within each discrete order of indexicality, ‘…some forms of semiosis are systemically perceived as valuable, others less valuable, and some not taken into account at all’, (Blommaert 2007: 117). In that regard, orders of indexicality are also systemic patterns of authority, of control and evaluation, and hence of inclusion and exclusion by real or perceived others (Blommaert 2007: 117—original emphasis). One participant, JV, alluded to discursive challenges when they stated: ‘I thought I was fluent in English before coming to Australia. After arriving here, this is when I realized my English was ‘strange’ to local people, which made me feel out of place. Additionally, I struggled to catch up with changes in styles of communication, which left me feeling even more out of place’. Another participant, CM, reported that they ‘turned into a different person’ when at home in Bulgaria, and when ‘back home’ in Australia. Each context demanded that they change how they looked and behaved: ‘Sometimes I think that I am a different person in different homes/countries. In Bulgaria…even how I look like. When I am there, I go to a hairdresser, wear cute clothes, all my friends are like that…you know how it is. And when I am here, I am a typical Aussie—flip flops, my hair is a mess. And I feel different’.

According to Noble (2013), migrants often ‘self-explore’—with many accepting that they are different and will never fully acquire the cultural nuances and identities valued by their host communities. As Noble (2013: 349) puts it:

It is this learning to be the difference which is intriguing. This is the formation of an ‘ethnicised habitus’ rather than a reproduced ‘migrant habitus’ (Tabar et al., 2010). As Michael [a participant in Noble’s research] says, ‘I feel at home in Australia … but I encounter experiences which put me in a position to feel unhomely.… Now, it is home but it is not home.’

Birman (1994, 1998) has used acculturation theory to explain adaptations observed among migrant communities. He argues, an individual may fully acculturate to only one—and sometimes, to neither of the living environments they move between. Moore and Barker (2012) have supported the view that people acculturate differently within various social domains. A common research finding is that for many first-generation immigrants, achieving a full sense of belonging is highly elusive (Fail, Thompson, and Walker 2004; Gaw 2007; Pollock and Van Reken 2009; Christensen and Jensen 2011; Hoersting and Jenkins 2011). Noble (2013) uses the term ‘ambivalent belonging’ to describe this ‘incomplete’ sense of belonging. Raffaeta and Duff (2013: 341) highlight the emotional impacts of continuously trying to belong, observing that one of the, ‘…most significant affective states associated with the experience of place and mobility is that of belonging—or not belonging—to the bodies, spaces, or territories one encounters in that mobility’.

To conclude this section, most of our participants reported failing to achieve a sense of full belonging, affirming the findings of Christensen and Jensen, (2011) and Noble (2013). Participants expressed a sense of ‘dual belonging’ as they felt they still belonged to their countries of origin. Thus, they displayed the ability to ‘…handle double or multiple belongings and [to] combine new and old attachments….’ (Christensen and Jensen 2011: 153)—this being a testament to their resilience and adaptability. While Noble (2013) has used the term ‘ambivalent belonging’ to capture this phenomenon, we prefer to use the term ‘fractional belonging’ as this captures the ‘oscillations’ between moments (or spaces) of belonging and unbelonging reported by participants. They did not experience a consistently ‘partial’ (or ambivalent) sense of belonging. Rather, they oscillated between belonging and unbelonging (albeit, with some in-between moments of ‘partial belonging’ also reported). The predominant response of our participants was that the struggle to belong was a continuous journey that did not appear to offer a point of arrival. Yuval-Davis (2006: 199) has alluded to this theme, describing the process of striving to belong as an ongoing act of ‘…self- identification or identification by others…’.

Some gains from the striving process

Another key theme that emerged was that the constant effort to belong was not entirely futile or fruitless. Rather, it also afforded incremental gains that fostered a stronger sense of belonging. As one participant, JK, explained, ‘Over time, some social spaces become less daunting or alienating. You get used to being in those spaces and, through trial and error, you eventually learn how to survive and even thrive in such spaces. Examples are workplaces, certain social moments or events (such as commuting to work on the train or attending a parent/teacher meeting). You gradually find your voice and begin to participate more in such events’.

Such observations are consistent with Moore and Barker’s (2012) notion of ‘gradualist acculturation’. As migrants adapt to life in a new living environment, they often engage in a two-pronged process of learning about the host culture while also figuring out how their own cultures relate to the host culture (Berry, Trimble, and Olmedo 1986; Berry 1997, 2008). Thus, they are usually processing more than one cultural system at a time (LaFromboise, Coleman, and Gerton 1993). Many migrants develop multiple cultural identities while also gaining intercultural competence, open-mindedness, and a growing ability to feel at home and to operate in spaces extending beyond their own cultural boundaries (Adler 1977; Baker 2001; Berry 2008; Christmas and Barker 2014; Moore and Barker 2012). Additionally, migrants also make connections with other migrants, regardless of differences in countries of origin—a phenomenon described in the literature as ‘finding an identity community’ (Austin and Gagné 2008; Renn and Ozaki 2010). As one participant, ‘Y’, observed: ‘I think that this is the key to where your home is—it is not the name, it is not country, or city, it is the group of your people that will keep you feeling less lonely’. As researchers, we related to participants’ experiences, in part, because we were part of their ‘identity communities’. Being migrants ourselves, we were drawn to discussions of belonging or unbelonging, which increased our sense of connection to an identity community that superseded country or origin, language, or ethnicity—a community sharing complex life experiences and engaging in self-reflection.

All participants also reported feeling a stronger sense of belonging while in private places such as their homes. Hooks (1990: 383), writing within the African American context, has alluded to the ‘homeplace’ a site of refuge, belonging and resistance:

Oh! That feeling of safety, or arrival, of homecoming when we finally reached the edge of her yard, when we could see the soot black face of our grandmother, Daddy Gus, sitting in his chair on the porch, smell his cigar and rest on his lap. Such a contrast, that feeling of homecoming, this sweetness and the bitterness of that journey, that constant reminder of white power and control.

Despite its smallness and sequestration, the homeplace provides a strong sense of belonging, restoration—but also resistance. From this vantage point, the larger and alienating lifeworld—‘out there’—can be critically reviewed, named as such and resisted.

Notably, some participants claimed that belonging sometimes occurred ‘spontaneously’. As one participant, TK, stated: ‘There is this ‘claiming kind of belonging’ where without any rhyme or reason, we feel drawn to a place or moment that we have never been to before. That’s when the place or moment claims us, and we fully open our minds and hearts to it’. Blackie (2018) has described how ‘making a home’ can unfold in multiple ways. The process can involve intentional engagement—where individuals consciously seek to connect with a place, its people, or the natural environment. It can also occur without deliberate effort or planning. One participant, ‘V’, recollected first ‘sighting’ the red soils of New South Wales while visiting Australia for the first time: ‘…it was still from the plane when we were coming toward Sydney and I saw the red soil, something in me just clicked. My heart jumped and it was so strange, but I got this feeling that I am coming home’. Brickell (2012) and Liu (2014) have suggested that belonging can occur as an emotional reaction—a view also supported by Ahmed 1999):

The issue is that home is not simply about fantasies of belonging—where do I originate from—but that it is sentimentalized as a space of belonging (‘home is where the heart is’). The question of home and being at home can only be addressed by considering the question of affect: being at home is here a matter of how one feels or how one might fail to feel. (Ahmed 1999: 341)

One participant, DK, reported experiencing ‘this feeling of comfort. The feeling that you are not in a place where you may feel some discomfort and out of place, like you don’t belong there’. Another participant, ‘R’, stated: ‘Place, country, people in it—all this is secondary. Home is in a state of feeling comfortable, and feeling safe’. ‘R’ also reported feeling at peace with all the uncertainty surrounding the question of belonging: ‘I was just reminded of a favourite song of mine, Ukaipo, by Luke Whaanga where he sings: ‘home is not four walls and a ceiling…it’s a feeling’’.

‘G’, a participant from Zimbabwe shared that his home country was important, not as a place that he hoped to return to, but as a nostalgic memory. While making this statement, ‘G’ was clear that he now regarded Australia as his permanent home: ‘Zimbabwe stays with me as a good memory—but I no longer really think about it as a place where I could stay or the place where I want to be buried when I die. I am here now—but over there only in memory’.

Another participant, ‘VL’—originally from Bulgaria—stressed that making a new home required commitment and usually took years to accomplish: ‘You need some time to really understand the people and the country. And I have a theory about immigration, and maybe it is just my experience, but when you go to a foreign country you need at least 4–5 years to feel at home, to find friends, even at work…’.

Clearly, all participants appreciated the ‘gains’ they had made in their journeys to find home and belonging in Australia. Such gains included making new friends, gaining a deeper understanding of the local culture, and acquiring the ability to function optimally within certain spaces or moments. Thus, the endless process of striving to belong was also punctuated with moments of recognizing some incremental gains. Acquiring a sense of belonging did not always follow from intentional effort. Rather, spontaneous and counter-intuitive forms of belonging—some occurring as emotional reactions—were also reported. Like the running hamster, almost all participants felt they made incremental gains and also gained some ‘stamina’ from the process of continuously striving to belong.

Inhabiting a liminal zone?

A third key theme, related to the phenomenon labelled here as ‘fractional belonging’, is the ‘liminality’ inherent in the process of ‘striving to belong’. A liminal space is the gap or boundary between two positions, or the mid-structure and transitional zone between two structures (Van Gennep 2019). A person inhabiting a liminal zone is neither here nor there, but could be described as both here and there (Van Gennep 2019). Ahmed (1999: 331) has described the elusiveness of belonging with reference to the tension between memories of the past and future life projections:

In such a narrative journey, then, the space which is most like home, which is most comfortable and familiar, is not the space of inhabitance—I am here—but the very space in which one finds the self as almost, but not quite, at home. In such a space, the subject has a destination, an itinerary, indeed a future, but in having such a destination, has not yet arrived….Home is indeed elsewhere, but it is also where the self is going: home becomes the impossibility and necessity of the subject’s future (one never gets there, but is always getting there), rather than the past which binds the self to a given place.

The idea of permanently inhabiting an in-between zone emerged from some of the interviews. One participant, ‘VL’, observed, ‘There are folks who decide to return to Bulgaria once they retire because they may have friends there or feel that they will spend their retired years better in the place of origin. But their children and grandchildren remain in Australia. So, they end up travelling between the two countries for the rest of their lives’.

Another participant, ‘Y’, stated: ‘I see it often with the older Bulgarians who live in Australia—all their friends are in Bulgaria, so they go back too, but their kids and grandkids are in Australia which makes them travel back and forth all the time. They are constantly moving between these two groups of people who they want to spend time with, not between two places, but between two groups of people’. These responses point to a relational liminality—a constant movement between two sites of belonging, each containing a cluster of ‘significant others’. One participant, ‘DK’, reported that she permanently lived an ‘in-between existence’, and quoted Maya Angelou who once remarked that, ‘You only are free when you realize you belong no place–you belong every place–no place at all’ (Angelou and Moyers, 1973). The comment treated liminality as a strength rather than a deficit, opposing Turner’s (1974) view of it as inability to ‘fit into the local norm’. We interpreted liminality as a strength as it affords higher self-understanding and critical scrutiny of local values, norms, and axioms which ‘fully-belonging’ people often take for granted. Blackie (2018) has suggested that liminality is actually ‘normal’, since most people experience a nostalgia that positions them between the past and the present. As Blackie (2018: 371) explains, ‘The opposite of true belonging is nostalgia: a longing for a place which no longer exists, or which maybe never existed at all, except in our imagination’.

As they reflected on their ‘in-between’ existence, most participants displayed a high degree of resiliency and self-understanding. One participant, ‘G’, suggested that his permanent state of unbelonging did not extend to his children, who viewed Australia as their primary home. Reflecting on his later-life plans, ‘G’ further stated that he planned to be buried in Australia after he died. His body would ‘…get ‘planted’ in Australian soil’, affording his children (and future descendants) a stronger claim to the local living environment. In making such a statement, ‘G’ reflected an awareness that he would never attain a complete belonging in Australia—but was also optimistic that his children and future descendants would. As ‘G’ observed, ‘If home is where you truly belong, then I have no home. I don’t feel completely at home in Australia—neither do I identify that much with Zimbabwe. The question of where I will be buried is therefore just a practical one. I will be buried where it’s easiest for my kids to visit my gravesite. And this is OK, since the portal to heaven won’t be closed to me simply because I have been buried in Australia—so there is no point in my body being repatriated all the way back to Zim. Additionally, my grave will be a monument in stone marking for my children and their children that their ancestry is here in local soil’. It appears that ‘G’ hoped to use his body as an instrument to resist the marginalization and in-betweenness’ he had experienced. Moreover, ‘G’ viewed his future burial place as a monument that would give a stronger sense of belonging to his children and future descendants.

Our participants reported that they had developed multiple and blended cultural identities. Having learnt to operate in different cultural environments, they also felt they did not truly belong to any single place. They had ‘picked up’ certain behaviours and perspectives from the Australian living environment which altered how they behaved when they visited their countries of origin. As one participant, ‘Y’, stated: ‘I felt like a tourist while visiting my home country—but also felt not quite at home after returning to Australia’. Moore and Barker (2012: 558) have described similar participant responses from a study conducted in the USA. ‘It’s never one place. There are little things that you’ll pick up everywhere you live, whether it’s values or traditions that you take with you everywhere you go, so you’re not 100% entirely at home anywhere’. Further reflecting on this experience, ‘Y’ described ‘home’ as ‘… that place that I am not at the moment. If I am in Australia and I say we do it like this at home, I refer to Bulgaria as being ‘home’. And when I am in Bulgaria I use the same phrase but I am now referring to Australia’.

The data also showed that belonging was related to ongoing constructions of the self. Participants described developing ‘amalgamated identities’ that incorporated various cultural influences. Hoersting and Jenkins (2011) have suggested that adopting (or accommodating) a cultural identity does not necessarily equate to ‘belonging’. Some migrants develop a strong multicultural intelligence and the ability to navigate between cultures and countries with ease, yet still struggle to feel a sense of belonging to any of the places or cultures they have experienced. This finding is supported by a study by Fail, Thompson, and Walker (2004), which shows that immigrants often develop a fragmented sense of belonging—or in some cases, none at all.

Madsen and Van Naerssen (2003) argue that modern technologies have facilitated a sense of belonging to multiple places, as individuals can maintain intercontinental connections and cultivate remote relationships through social media. For transnational migrants, this means they can retain ties to their home country, including friendships and family relationships, via these platforms. Two Bulgarian participants, Y. and A., shared how access to technology allowed them to stay connected with loved ones in Bulgaria. Y., in particular, highlighted the emotional benefit of decreased nostalgia. It is also important to note that this research was made possible in part through the use of modern technologies, which enabled virtual connections with participants. Without virtual conferencing platforms, we would not have been able to engage with all of our participants in a way that closely mirrored face-to-face interactions. Video calls allowed us to connect authentically, experiencing participants’ stories not only through their words but also by sharing virtual space, observing their body language, and interpreting their expressions.

Moore and Barker (2012) identify a ‘third culture’, which they describe as the ‘curse’ of emigration. Once a person leaves their home country, they can never truly ‘return’. The home country has continued to change in their absence, and they too have changed while living abroad. As ‘Y’ observed, it felt ‘strange’ to be back in Bulgaria and then realize that most people around them had lived there their entire lives. ‘But walking on the streets alone, among other Bulgarians who are strangers to me, I realize how I have lost touch, become disconnected somehow, and I am a part of the past of this city but not a part of its present’.

We conclude this section by reiterating that most participants reported living in an enduring state of liminality—between cultural identities, geographical locations and clusters of significant others located in different places. Furthermore, most participants recognized they could never fully revert to their former ‘selves’, even when they travelled back to their countries of origin. One participant clearly recognized that they and their ‘home country’ had ‘grown apart’ during their absence. Nonetheless, the state of permanent ‘in-betweenness’ appeared to have sharpened critical self-awareness among the participants—with one participant visualizing their planned burial in Australia as an affirmation of ‘belonging’ for their children and future descendants. Like the running but never arriving hamster, participants reported moving but not arriving at one clear (or ‘settled’) identity.

An actor network? Reflecting on the limits of individual agency

The final aspect of ‘fractional belonging’ that emerged from the interviews relates to how ‘striving to belong’ appears to be driven by forces that extend beyond individual agency. Just as the running hamster has to run, regardless of its will, several participants reported having to contend with forces or factors that shaped important later-life decisions. Social psychologist Allen and colleagues have argued that the sense of belonging is supported or hindered by ‘…the social milieu, which dynamically interacts with the individual’s character, experiences, culture, identity, and perceptions’ (Allen et al., 2021: 88). As one participant explained, ‘You wake up one morning and realise you now identify Australia as your primary place of belonging—but you can’t figure out how you got to this point. It’s almost as if life ‘happens’ without necessarily consulting with you’. Latour (2007) followed by Cudworth and Hobden (2013), proposed ‘Actor Network Theory’, which presupposes that most human actions and processes are effected not necessarily by the individual or volitional human agent, but by actor networks comprising of both human and non-human forces.

Participants in this study reported how various circumstances—including time spent in Australia, work commitments, professional relationships, property investments, and growing familiarity with the local environment—all acted to shape their experiences of ‘fractional belonging’. As participant ‘TJ’ observed, ‘You grow old and you get nearer to the point where you need to formulate your later-life plans, whether like it or not. And what turns out to be your forever home, or final place of rest, is sometimes decided for you or presented to you by the circumstances—and it is not necessarily a matter of what you have personally chosen’.

Ni Mhurchu (2021) has argued that home and the sense of positive belonging associated with it, is built through attachments of love, friendship, and familiarity with family, national and transnational connections to blood and non-blood relatives and relationships. After travelling with their children back to ‘countries of origin’ many participants realized that regardless of familial connections to their home countries, a de facto reality had emerged where the UK, to which their children belonged had also become their primary home (Ni Mhurchu 2021).

As previously noted, one participant in our study viewed their burial in Australia as a symbolical ‘planting’ of a seed that would foster a stronger sense of belonging for their children and future generations. In this case, ‘belongingness’ (for their children and future generations) would be partly driven by the ‘de-facto’ reality that their father (or fore father) was ‘permanently’ buried in Australia.

Ahmed (1999: 341) has reflected on the interaction between the social subject and their intimate living environment:

The lived experience of being-at-home … involves the enveloping of subjects in a space which is not simply outside them: being-at-home suggests that the subject and space leak into each other, inhabit each other. To some extent we can think of the lived experience of being at home in terms of inhabiting a second skin, a skin which does not simply contain the homely subject, but which allows the subject to be touched and touch the world that is neither simply in the home or away from the home.

The agentive role of the living environment is particularly salient for immigrants navigating new lifeworlds. As Ahmed (1999: 342) further observes,

What migration narratives involve, then, is a spatial reconfiguration of an embodied self: a transformation in the very skin through which the body is embodied. Hence the experience of moving often to a new home is most felt through the surprises in sensation: different smells, different sounds as night, more or less dust….‘how do bodies reinhabit space?’

As also reported in a previous section, one participant reported that they were ‘claimed’ by the local scenery. ‘… so when we went there—the air and the birds and the gum trees, the smell of rain—all these things just overwhelmed me with the experience of finding something that has been long lost to me. It was something I longed for. So, I told him right then (my husband), and I did not have any intentions to move to Australia, we were thinking to live in New Zealand. But I told him—I have to live here. For me Australia is, very strange, but it felt like home’.

The idea that some participants found belonging without actively striving to achieve it attests to the efficacy of an actor network. It is almost as if the environment participated in bringing about certain outcomes. Conversely, some participants reported that their ‘human- centred’ efforts to find belonging in Australia did not bear much fruit, as they could not sufficiently ‘conform’ or ‘adapt’ to expectations imposed by their new surroundings. This appears to have sharpened their longing for ‘more complete’ belonging as opposed to ‘fractional belonging’, where only parts or elements of themselves were accepted.

Implications for research and practice

The study of Bulgarian and Zimbabwean immigrants in Australia offers valuable insights into the evolving and multifaceted nature of belonging. It positions belonging as a dynamic, ongoing process, rather than a fixed state, highlighting that full belonging often remains an unattainable ideal for many migrants. For these individuals, belonging transcends national and cultural boundaries, connecting to broader identity communities and multiple affiliations. By adopting a cross-disciplinary approach, the study reveals the complexity of migrant experiences, in which both external factors (such as societal acceptance and integration) and internal factors (such as personal identity and cultural ties) shape one’s sense of belonging.

The study illustrates that many participants have come to terms with the idea that they may never fully belong to Australia, reflecting the nuanced and ambivalent nature of migration. Belonging, as the study suggests, is not a binary concept but exists on a spectrum, shaped by ongoing negotiations of identity. This complex understanding calls for a more flexible, empathetic approach from practitioners. Policymakers, social workers, and community organizations should acknowledge the layered, evolving nature of belonging when supporting migrants. By embracing deeper listening, compassion, and flexibility, practitioners can provide more effective support, helping migrants navigate the challenges of migration and integration, while fostering emotional and social well-being.

Conclusion

The concept of ‘fractional belonging’ as introduced in this study challenges the assumption that such an experience is inherently negative. Instead, it highlights resilience, persistence, and incremental steps toward establishing a sense of home. Belonging, as framed in this study, is a continual process of reattachments to people, places, and experiences, unfolding over time. This understanding invites further exploration into the complexities of belonging, especially in multicultural societies. The study ultimately encourages professionals in various fields to engage more deeply with the lived realities of migrants, adopting a personalized, empathetic approach that supports their ongoing journey toward belonging and integration, while also enriching the social fabric of host societies.

Acknowledgments

We are deeply grateful to all participants from the Zimbabwean and Bulgarian communities in Australia who generously shared their experiences and contributed to this project. Their insights and perspectives have been invaluable in shaping the findings and enriching the understanding of belonging within migrant communities.

Funding

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

References