‘It makes me feel at home’: establishing a sense of belonging after leaving the childhood home

Abstract

ABSTRACT Moving out from the childhood home is an essential transition in most young people’s lives. Based on the concept of ‘belonging’, this article explores how young people obtain a sense of belonging to a new place after leaving their childhood homes. The article explores the heterogeneous processes involved in the process of coming to belong to a new place. The article is based on a longitudinal interview study involving 36 Danish young people, whom we have followed for 12 months in their process of leaving home. In the interviews, the young people talk about their feelings and thoughts in relation to this transition. The initial period, in which young people establish themselves in a new place is often characterised by feelings of insecurity. The article shows how young people act upon these feelings and in doing so create a sense of belonging to a new place through heterogeneous affective, material, relational and spatial processes linked to self-construction. The article thereby nuances the concept of belonging and argues that the establishment of belonging to a new place is a multidimensional performative process of ‘holding oneself in place’.