ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the important role that the future plays in people’s sense of belonging. While the research literature posits belonging as a dynamic and changing experience, the necessary condition of change, namely time, is rarely examined in and of itself. In addition, the belonging literature has paid much less attention to the future than to the past. This chapter therefore asks the question: what happens to our understanding of belonging as a felt experience when we study it through the temporal lens of people’s future horizons? I argue that complex versions of time are in operation as people attempt to form a sense of belonging and that ideas about the future influence a person’s ability to form a sense of belonging in the present. What future is seen as possible, in turn, is at least partly shaped by a person’s habitus and access to resources.
