When Consensus Falters, We Co-create: Attending to Power in a Practitioner/Scholar Partnership to Amplify Newcomer Belonging

Abstract

This article interrogates the politics of belonging in scholar–practitioner collaborations by analysing and reflecting upon a group project that advocated for a more equitable approach to newcomer belonging and integration in an urban setting in the United States. The structure of our collaboration revealed unaddressed and unspoken dynamics that collectively reinforced boundaries and hierarchies in our group, despite a level of intentionality around democratic praxis among the community-engaged scholars who initially brought participants together. The article asks: How can we work towards a notion of belonging if we haven’t worked out an equitable approach within our own group where everyone, including newcomers, feels like they belong? The article relies on a methodology of critical reflexive dialogue between the four co-authors – two scholars and two practitioners – to analyse and reflect on the ways that power imbalances are bound up in questions of belonging and representation.