What does belonging in governing actually entail? This paper aims to identify concrete strategies for furthering belonging through collaborative governance, particularly for individuals in government roles who are actively seeking new ways to engage constituents more deeply than conventional, transactional forms of public engagement allow.

Around the world, communities and organizations are developing strategies to confront the weaponization of gender and build a future rooted in belonging and pluralistic democracy. In this series of conversations, we speak with individuals and groups at the forefront of this work.

Read the fourth piece in the Blueprint for Belonging paper series, "New Organizing Strategies for California’s Future," featuring Miguel Hernandez of the OCCCO, a faith-rooted, community-led organization in Orange County focused on developing everyday leaders to organize for systemic change.

How can the adults entrusted with youth care — parents, educators, coaches, librarians, community leaders, and policymakers — ensure that young people feel a sense of belonging in their daily lives? This study seeks to expand the adoption of belonging design in youth-serving institutions by centering young people as insightful and creative architects of their own world.

The Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice (ICIJ) is composed of over 35 organizations that serve immigrant communities in the Inland Empire of Southern California. The Inland Empire region includes the counties of Riverside and San Bernardino. Geographically, the region...

True North Organizing Network is a group engaged in community organizing in California’s “Far North,” especially the counties of Humboldt and Del Norte, and on Tribal lands. This region of California is often left “off of the map”...

Contemporary debates often treat belonging as a fragile or novel aspiration—something that must be newly invented or defended against the complexities of modernity. Yet many of the norms, institutions, and moral commitments that structure modern societies already contain seeds of belonging...

The MAGA agenda has expanded under two Trump administrations, fraying the moral and social ties that are foundational to fostering connections and organizing toward progress. Communities are increasingly fractured by economic stress, political anger, and a media ecosystem that reinforces biases rather than seeking shared truths.

OCCCO, the Orange County Congregation Community Organization, has a vision for Orange County, California: to be a place where all people live with dignity and thrive. Their campaign, Anaheim is Our Home, is an invitation for the city of Anaheim to be...

This white paper documents how local and regional organizations are confronting these challenges and shaping pathways toward just transitions that are not only low-carbon but also equitable, locally grounded, and reparative. Conducted by the Global Justice Program (GJP) at the Othering & Belonging Institute, UC Berkeley...

This graphic illustration serves as a meaning-making tool, outlining the foundational components of building for belonging and the practices that enable it within projects and places. Illustration by Wenjia Tang. Click here to download the full-size...

Note: This is our 2025 update to the our report published in 2021. Click here to view the original. -- The Othering and Belonging Institute is pleased to unveil a major update and extensive addition to our “Roots of Structural Racism” project...

Introduction Racial residential segregation is a longstanding problem that has plagued the United States for roughly a century. Although leading measures suggest a gradual decline since the 1970s, our 2021 national study revealed surprising increases...

Introduction Segregation is a complicated, nuanced concept, and one that has eluded simple definition and universal measure despite decades of intellectual effort. Some scholars believe that segregation is really a composite of five concepts, while...

Join us in learning from UC Berkeley’s graduate students in two new policy memos on housing policy for belonging, adapted from their much longer student projects! These memos offer lessons for advocates, funders, legislators, and other change-makers...