Belonging

‘An individual’s interaction with others and the world around them can enrich or limit their experience of belonging.’
‘An individual’s interaction with others and the world around them can enrich or limit their experience of belonging.’

Belonging explores a wider notion of self-enrichment. Acceptance being a key aspect of belonging, integrated with the want to belong. If one or the other is not evident, belonging fails to be achieved. It can be defined as a state of being enhanced through the interaction with others and one’s environment. A lacking of this experience can lead to a sense of not belonging within a body or association of people. These ideas of association are suggested in Peter Skrzynecki’s poetic compilation, the Immigrant Chronicle. Forming an autobiographical style of poetry, Skrzynecki explores alienation and disconnection in his poetry, in particular, Migrant Hostel and St Patrick’s College. Though the poems differ greatly in narrative, the ideas of not belonging are evident in each.
Skrzynecki, within his poem Migrant Hostel, discusses the interaction of those in the migrant hostels of Australia in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. The author’s personally contextually experienced the Parkes Migrant Centre in central-western New South Wales. With the great influx of migrants, in particular the Polish asylum seekers from the Second World War, Skrzynecki’s family emigrated to Australia. Those who lived in these camped “lived like birds of passage – Always sensing a change”. This simile is used to emphasis the lack of connection these immigrants have with the Australian culture, land and community. The constant change, inevitable, is expected and at times, welcomed. Negative imagery is used to reiterate this separation from the mainstream Australians, “A barrier at the main gate Sealed off the highway”. The powerless and inferior nature of the persona is highlighted through the use of metaphor, “As [the barrier] rose and fell like a finger...