Cartographies of belonging: mapping nomadic narratives of first-year students

Abstract

In this work, we explore first-year students’ experiences of belonging through the theoretical and methodological lens of nomadism. Specifically, we problematize conceptions of belonging subjects and spaces as bounded and static, instead taking up belongingness as a dynamic process that enfolds complex experiences and spaces. Using feminist poststructuralism, we move toward an understanding of belonging that disrupts stasis and fixity, conceptualizing belonging as requiring continual negotiation. Our analysis produces a cartography across participants, a narrative mapping of the connections, relations, and flows of belonging that parallel and disrupt static understandings of what it means to belong in higher education. This work suggests new methodological and theoretical possibilities for considering and understanding narratives of belonging in the nebulous, multiplicitous, and shifting places and spaces of higher education institutions.

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