Mirrors and Witnesses: Understanding Nonbinary College Students' Sense of Belonging

Abstract:Nonbinary college students are an underresearched and often misinterpreted and misunderstood population. These students face compulsory heterogenderism (Nicolazzo, 2017), institutional cisgenderism (Seelman, 2014), and other structural barriers to belonging and student success. Through qualitative interviews (N = 6), this phenomenological study explored nonbinary undergraduates' experiences of belonging on campus with regard to their gender identities. The study was grounded in an interwoven theoretical framework of Rendón's (1994) validation theory, Strayhorn's (2019) sense of belongingness, and Devor's (2004) concepts of witnesses and mirrors in an effort to understand sense of belonging as a construct in college impact research. Findings depict what belonging feels like for nonbinary students, lack of belonging, and sites of belonging during college. Implications for improving research and practice in order to understand and build capacity for a sense of belonging for nonbinary students follow.