Zones of belonging - Experiences from a Danish study on belonging, local community and mobility

Abstract

In this paper we investigate the connections between population development, socio-economic status and the sense of belonging, in the understanding of social life in places. The article is based on a mixed-method study that includes register-based demographic data on inhabitants in the municipality of Aalborg in Denmark, survey data, and findings from fifty qualitative ethnographic interviews. We argue that local belonging is important to people, although increasingly complex and varied across local neighbourhoods. The conceptualization of the relations between demographic change, neighbourhood development and belonging is influenced by the Human Ecology (Park & Burgess 1925) that offers useful but also premature theoretical contributions in this field. Thus we argue that this perspective need to be expanded in order to pay attention to the varied meanings ascribed to place and discuss the possibility of mapping out zones of belonging in the contemporary society.