Socio-cultural invisibility and belonging: Latin American migrants in the north of England

• Emotions of belonging show how migrants bond to their societies of settlement.
• Contentment, gratitude and compromise underpin local expressions of belonging.
• Belonging can be developed from a diversity of social locations.
• Socio-cultural invisibility curtails chances to reproduce cultural belonging.
• Emotional attachments to origin and destination are fluid but not incompatible.

This paper explores the multiple and simultaneous senses of belonging of Latin Americans in the north of England, a sparse migrant population characterised by a high degree of socio-cultural invisibility, i.e. lack of official recognition and limited cultural/ethnic organisation. It draws on a project conducted with 10 Latin American and Latino British families (totalling 30 adults and dependent children of 8–18 years of age) and 14 other informants and stakeholders in the Yorkshire and Greater Manchester regions. The paper analyses the senses of everyday belonging of the adult participants and the role that conditions of socio-cultural invisibility play in their experiences. Significant here are the lack of ethno-cultural local spaces and reluctance to embrace pan-ethnic identifications, which bring to the fore the relevance of other local social contexts and of transnational ties as sites of everyday belonging. It is argued that by paying attention to the emotions and emotional compromises that constitute migrants' senses of belonging, it is possible to develop nuanced insights into the diversity of ways in which migrants experience processes of incorporation and combine bonds to sending and receiving societies.