One overall topic in the research on young people leaving care is the question how they manage to get along in heterogeneous social situations and in regards to sometimes paradoxical and affording environments. The idea of creating belongings and safe spaces is in this context seldom referred to. According to the concept of relational agency put forward by Emirbayer and Mische (1998) human agency is a “temporally embedded process of social engagement, informed by the past, (in its habitual aspect), but also oriented towards the future (as a capacity to imagine alternative possibilities) and towards the present (as a capacity to contextualize past habits and future projects with the contingencies of the moment) (Emirbayer and Mische 1998: 963)”.The presentation will enrich the here proposed concept of agency by the ideas of an agentic realism (Barad, 2007) and create from there a link to the notion of belonging(s).
Aspects of belonging according to Yuval-Davis (2006) are social locations, identifications and emotional attachments (identity), ethical and political values (normative values) (Yuval-Davies, 2006, 2010). This means that belongings can be characterized by specific temporalities and geographies (Eribon, 2016). The aim is to use the insights gained by the theoretical foundations of relational agency to inform and differentiate concepts of belongings.
The sample the presentation refers to includes eight qualitative retrospective case studies on care leavers from former foster care (counting the last placement). It is part of a greater ongoing research on care leavers (Trans Care) at the University of Luxembourg.
