Ways of Belonging

Ways of Belonging examines the experiences of undocumented young people who are excluded from K-12 schools in Canada and are rendered invisible to the education system. Canadian law doesn’t mention the existence of undocumented children, and thus their access to education rests on discretionary practices and is often denied altogether. This book brings the stories of undocumented young people vividly alive, putting them into conversation with the perspectives of the different actors in schools and courts who fail to include these young people. Drawing on five years of ethnographic fieldwork, Francesca Meloni shows how ambivalence shapes the lives of young people who are caught between the desire to belong and the impossibility of fully belonging. Meloni pays close attention to these young people’s struggles and hopes, showing us what it means to belong and to endure in contexts of social exclusion. Ways of Belonging reveals the opacities and failures of a system that excludes children from education and puts their lives in invisibility mode.

"Ways of Belonging provides sophisticated and empathic insights into how young people whose lives are shaped by legal liminality and an ambivalent national reception navigate these vulnerabilities while concurrently exerting agency. A must-read for developmentalists, educators, policy makers, human rights advocates, or, frankly, anyone with a social conscience.", "Meloni's book usefully contributes to a growing literature that probes the nuances involved in processes of migrant 'illegalization'. By avoiding simplistic accounts of state oppression and victimization, she proposes a multi-dimensional framework for understanding how people who are 'vanished' may, nevertheless, generate affective strategies that enable layered ways of surviving and even flourishing."

FRANCESCA MELONI is assistant professor in social justice at King’s College London.