The Loneliness of Unbelonging

When you occupy liminal spaces; betwixt and between places, definitions, discourses, communities; a sense of Unbelonging can haunt you. Unbelonging and loneliness go hand in hand.

I speak from this place of Unbelonging as a mixed-race, neurodivergent woman of colour, exploring the ways in which dominant narratives of race, place and identity can profoundly shape people's experience of loneliness.

The social construction of race as a fixed, unchanging category, together with assumptions about who can belong in certain places and spaces - from nation states to ethnic communities to workplaces - creates tensions and boundaries that divide and alienate people from each other and within themselves.

Drawing on perspectives from intersectional feminist thought, I challenge fixed and static notions of identity, arguing that embracing complexity, fluidity and multiplicity can combat loneliness by creating new spaces of belonging that celebrate rather than penalize difference.