This article continues the conceptual work of developing a process-oriented perspective on belonging by taking up the active engagement of affiliation (and disaffiliation) as an undertheorised yet necessary aspect of accomplishing belonging. In developing the concept we draw on Marx’s notion of work as material activity in forms of life and the sociological concepts of face-work and emotion work. We conceptualise belonging work as relational work concerned with shaping situational interactions; webs of relationships; social boundaries; and materials and rhythms as dimensions of belonging. This work is conditioned by social categorisations and patterns of inclusion and exclusion through which it takes place in relation to specific forms of life. The concept of belonging work offers a theoretically integrative and sensitising concept that highlights the relational dynamics of belonging, providing insight and inspiration to social researchers inquiring into the work of belonging and its associated social consequences throughout the research process.

This article examines the effects of the vertical disintegration of production on airport terminal workers through the theoretical lens of occupational belonging, highlighting themes of sensory and embodied experience, changing dynamics of employment relationships, and new patterns of inclusion and exclusion. The article contributes to efforts to produce nuanced empirical accounts of the dynamics of post-Fordist work, showing how restructuring had the effect of disrupting employment relations and activity rhythms, while nevertheless preserving ‘the airport’ as a symbolic and relational setting in relation to which occupational belonging could be constructed. The article examines how the work of binding people and jobs, previously undertaken by integrated organisations, was taken up by workers themselves through their personal relationships and will to belong. The article highlights the capacity to undertake this work of belonging as a central dynamic of occupational inclusion and exclusion, a capacity which in this empirical context was experienced as being shaped by age and the ability to make use of personal relationships in navigating precarious employment relations. Based on this empirical analysis, the article argues for belonging as a valuable perspective for studies of materiality, symbolic identification and relationality in post-Fordist work.

Organisational restructuring involving cost-cutting, downsizing, and the acquisition and divestment of different functions is an increasingly normalised aspect of employment in both the private and public sectors. This article takes up the question of the effects of restructuring on workers through a study based on in-depth, semi-structured interviews of long-term workers in Finland’s state-owned postal service, using the concept of dignity as an analytical lens. The article distinguishes between everyday, organisational, and social dignity, using this distinction to capture how workers strove to sustain dignity in a process of organisational restructuring that generated dignity threats related to occupational devaluation. The study shows how dignity in postal work has been dependent on a particular historical configuration of public service work involving the employer organisation, employment relations, and occupational values. Cost-driven restructuring has destabilised this configuration, producing a stark separation between dignity in everyday work and the organisational indignities of restructuring in postal workers’ experiences. Feeling unable to affect organisational changes in their work, postal workers have been left to sustain dignity through everyday relationality, and by drawing intra-organisational boundaries to temporary workers and upper managers based on an occupational hierarchy of commitment and competence. The study highlights the significance of organisational support for dignity at work, particularly in relation to the dignity threats generated by prolonged processes of restructuring.