My interest in belonging and in particular its affective dimensions emerged when I was working on a project with refugee youth and university students that is described in detail in Chapter 6 in this part. As part of the participatory methodology, the participants were encouraged to make short films about belonging and migration after undertaking a number of conceptual and technical training workshops. At the conclusion of this project, my collaborators and I have pursued opportunities with local organisations to scale up this preliminary work, particularly as we found gaps in extant scholarship and policymaking related to how belonging needed to be co-created in migratory contexts. This co-creation and its affective and mediated dimensions constitute the crux of how belonging is re-conceptualised in the concluding part. Belonging is regarded as critical here for refugee and ex-refugee communities in host countries in the Global North, and follows on from the previous part focused on second-generation migrants who are already claiming belonging through their aspiration for collective representation.

Existing work on multicultural youth in the Australian context, which Chapter 6 explores here, over-emphasises place of ethno-cultural origin over other relevant factors when it comes to generating feelings of belonging. While such work does examine current levels of formal and informal civic engagement as it is linked to belonging, there is no evidence of attempts to facilitate it. It is also important to understand where belonging is obstructed (un-belonging in particular sites) and how it can be shaped and co-created in place, as well as in the imaginative dimension through social network support. According to the study titled ‘Social Networks, Belonging and Active Citizenship among Migrant Youth in Australia’, different ethnic groups have varying reasons for desiring cross-cultural engagement (Mansouri et al, 2013). In addition, Mansouri et al found that belonging within groups (family and ethnicity-based) is seen as a source of comfort, but also as a hindrance for doing more outward engagement. Also of relevance are findings from the ‘Multicultural Youth Australia Census’, in which belonging was measured using social, cultural, and economic indicators (Wyn et al, 2018). The age group for this nationwide survey was 15– 19-year-olds, and it covered youth with ancestral backgrounds from 13 different countries.