Liminal belonging: routes into research

Liminal Belonging in El Nuevo South: The Geographies of Inclusion and Exclusion for Hispanic Young Adults within Northwest Arkansas*

“…Cristina Pallí (2006) 7 also engages with Turner's concept of liminality to push back against a simple "container" notion of belonging that defines belonging as a clear-cut binary (either you are an insider or outsider). Pallí gives the example of a Gypsy community in Spain that asserts a complex belonging-one that differentiates between their culture and Spanish culture yet expresses national belonging.…”

“…Pallí gives the example of a Gypsy community in Spain that asserts a complex belonging-one that differentiates between their culture and Spanish culture yet expresses national belonging. She suggests that Gypsies belong (express national belonging) because of "moments of alteration" or "becoming other" that makes it so that they have the "presence of otherness [Spanish culture] within the self" (Pallí 2006: Extending Relationality section, para. 6).…”

“…Building on this scholarship, I develop the concept of "liminal belonging" to capture my respondents' geographically contingent and fluctuating sense of belonging which has aspects of both belonging and exclusion. Even though I do not discuss liminal belonging in terms of "moments of alteration" (Pallí 2006) or nationality and diasporic experiences (Lee 2020), I frame liminal belonging as being fundamentally fluid and unstable, or in the words of Jieun Lee (2020) as being "in constant flux." Like these three scholars (Anzaldúa 1987;Lee 2020;Pallí 2006), I also reject simple notions of belonging.…”

“…Even though I do not discuss liminal belonging in terms of "moments of alteration" (Pallí 2006) or nationality and diasporic experiences (Lee 2020), I frame liminal belonging as being fundamentally fluid and unstable, or in the words of Jieun Lee (2020) as being "in constant flux." Like these three scholars (Anzaldúa 1987;Lee 2020;Pallí 2006), I also reject simple notions of belonging. Belonging for Hispanic young adults in El Nuevo South is liminal: multidimensional, dynamic, geographically contingent, and perpetually straddling inclusion and exclusion.…”