Belonging Series, Article 2
You get your first pay-slip but can’t understand it because it’s in Danish. You reach for (what you think is) a favorite chocolate and discover it’s actually full of licorice. No stores sell your favorite spices. You miss your doctor’s appointment while sitting in the waiting room because you didn’t know to scan your yellow card on arrival.
If you’re left-handed or use a wheeled device to get around, you’re familiar with how excruciatingly isolating it can be to navigate a world that wasn’t designed with you in mind. It’s similar being an immigrant in a foreign country. All day, we navigate a world and a life designed for someone else – in this case, Danes.
Of course it makes sense that Denmark was designed for Danes. But this means that the spaces we (the immigrants) inhabit, the websites we visit, and the policies we navigate all tell us, in one subtle way or another: You are Other.
Maybe that’s why 9 out of 10 expats feel isolated.
Perhaps, after deep immersion in these subtle messages of exclusion, we’ve grown accustomed to – and even identify with – the idea that we don’t belong. That we are not invited in. Maybe welcome, but not wanted.
But there is good news here. If these messages are the result of design, well… design can be changed.
A few years ago I came across a book called Design for Belonging, about a framework developed by Susie Wise at the Stanford d.school. It was an absolute game-changer, and maybe even a life-changer, for how I see and interact with the world around me.
Susie writes, “To create change and build more belonging, you also have to be able to see how belonging is constructed in your life and in the systems around you.” Let’s try it.
How does belonging feel? It can feel like… being invited, being seen and heard, feeling that you’re a part of something, that you can be honest and proud about who you are, that you’re comfortable, validated, in a good place. Now stop and take a quick inventory of your day: Where did you feel a sense of belonging? Where did you see belonging happening? If you didn’t feel or see it today, where have you felt it or seen it at other times in your life?
Now do the same though exercise, but with othering. How does othering feel? I can feel like not being welcome, a sense that you need to reduce/diminish yourself to fit in, invisible, disconnected, projected upon, uncomfortable. Now take an inventory of your day again: Where did you feel a sense that you were othered? Where did you see othering happening? If you didn’t feel or see it today, where have you felt it or seen it at other times in your life?
Now ask yourself: What subtle design choices contributed to those feelings of belonging or othering? Was is something about the space you were in? The roles given to or assumed by people; the type of event; the kind of ritual or routine involved; the way people were grouped; the kinds of communications that occurred before, during, or after the experience; the food, the clothing, or even the schedules or rhythms of it?
In what ways might those decisions have been different, and how would they have changed the way you felt in that moment?
These reflections can help us to start identifying how belonging is constructed in our life and in the systems around us. And then begin to shape that design.
What would it look and feel like to live in a neighborhood that was designed in a way that welcomed everyone, from every culture? What would the shared spaces be like? What about the roles, local events, rituals and routines, groupings, communications, food, clothing, and schedules be like?
Now find your own power as a belonging designer: Can you use design for belonging to create just one of the things you imagined?
Here’s what I’m going to do. Sometime during the winter months, after Christmas has passed and we’re all just stuck waiting for spring… I will design an event that supports a sense of belonging around food. Remember, I wrote a whole article on how much I miss homemade flour tortillas!
I will organize (or co-organize) a progressive dinner, with appetizer-sized dishes at each house, with each house sharing food from their own culture. So, just as an example, maybe we’ll start with a homemade tortilla at house 1, eat a samosa at house 2, have borscht at house 3, and finish with danish rye layer cake at house 4. In a funny way, I think this progressive celebration of different cultures and homes is about as hyggeligt as it gets.
When the systems we inhabit every day ask us to integrate (change ourselves to fit in), we can gradually begin to internalize a sense of isolation and other-ness. Instead of integrating, I think we should put our energy into belonging here. Let’s invite ourselves and one another to contribute to this beautiful culture as our full selves, amplifying the hygge by adding our own unique light and warmth to it.
In case you haven’t felt it yet today, let me go ahead and say it: Friend, neighbor, you belong here.
Join me in building a community where everyone belongs. This article was written by Elisabeth McClure, founder of nabo, an app-based community for internationals in Denmark that was intentionally designed for belonging. Would you like to learn more about this design framework? You can join nabo for free through the Community Builders Program, where you will get free training in the Design for Belonging framework, and get rewards each time you complete a level in the training.
- Entry to nabo is free for anyone who needs it.
- I ask 70 kr/month for those who are able to pay, as a contribution to keeping the community and the movement for belonging alive in Denmark.
