If I am not as Good as Others: Chinese Recreational Dancers and Perceptions of Belonging in Aotearoa New Zealand

ABSTRACT

Recreational arts are significant in the fostering of an inclusive, diverse, and pluralistic society, particularly in an era of mass global migration. Community-based arts activities can provide a sense of solidarity with, and significance within, the new societies that migrants inhabit. A sense of belonging is a culturally complex understanding however, and can be informed by a migrant’s formative educational experiences from their homeland. This article therefore examines the experiences of Chinese migrants engaged in community dance classes in Aotearoa New Zealand, investigating: how can expectations of learning progression within a community dance class influence a Chinese migrant’s sense of belonging? Through a qualitative enquiry using semi-structured interviews, this study identifies how formative processes of comparison, and a clear measurement of learning progress, can influence the way Chinese migrants experience validation, and their subsequent formation of social value.

KEYWORDS:

• Dance
• migration
• China
• inclusion
• education

Introduction

“The belonging you seek is not behind you …it is ahead.”

Uttered by the fictional character Maz Kanata on the planet Takadona in the 2015 Star Wars sequel The Force Awakens, these words find resonance on planet Earth during an era of unprecedented mass migration. Responding to various political, economic, and environmental disasters and opportunities, by 2019, 272 million people were living outside the country that they were born in (International Organization for Migration 2019). As refugee crises engulf the world this number is rapidly growing: it is anticipated that by 2050 there will be an additional one billion people displaced by climate change (Stapleton et al. 2017). These individuals will have very diverse cultural backgrounds and experiences of political and legal status, and varying expectations within the new lands that they are inhabiting. It can be argued, however, that all will seek a sense of belonging (Deci and Ryan 2000). As Maz Kanata advises to those migrating between worlds, achieving this universal need involves a re-orientation of where belonging exists and what belonging means. This, in turn, can require finding new teachers to help navigate this path to belonging.

This article examines the role of recreational dancing in this mass acculturation process, specifically exploring how a migrant’s formative learning habits can influence their experience of belonging to a new community through learning dance. Such dance learning activities have long been recognized as an important means of developing communal feelings and a sense of belonging in new environments (Liu and Wu 2018). While social dances from the homeland have helped sustain a sense of diasporic identity and belonging within a new country (Wilcox 2011), such “folk” dances can also contribute to more disparate and segregated societies, particularly when the reinvention of traditional dances in new contexts involves an essentialist theorizing that connects culture and ethnicity (Mathews 2019). This article does not focus, therefore, on how an association with cultural heritage through particular dances might foster a communal sense of belonging. Integrating people within a culturally pluralist and inclusive society requires a recreational dance environment in which people might develop a sense of belonging within, for example, an adult ballet class, a salsa club, or a hip-hop crew, even when their cultural backgrounds have had no historic association with the dance form. We therefore explore here how the experience of learning dance itself can affect a sense of belonging for migrants in a new society. This belongingness is a complex phenomenon, and can include a wider sense of belonging within a pluralist society, and a closer sense of belonging amongst a small collective. Our key concern is in identifying how and why this experience of belonging manifests, rather than specifically to whom.

Recreational dancing refers to a leisure learning activity that involves individuals learning dance for the pleasure and health benefits that enacting the dance provides (Hanna 2015). Within this article we focus on community-oriented forms of recreational dance; those underpinned by pedagogical philosophies of inclusion to encourage participation and socialization, open to people with or without a dance learning background (Amans 2017). The purpose of such dance learning is to contribute to an active, inclusive and participatory society, rather than to advance elite professional performance training (Houston 2005). Such recreational dance provides a space for individuals to dialogue about differences, fostering a more tolerant and pluralistic society (Wise et al. 2020). For teachers of recreational dance, being culturally inclusive in such classes involves more than just a warm greeting and an opening circle: inclusion is complex and requires ongoing investigations into the divergent ways that individuals from different cultures actively construct their personal sense of belonging. Within this article, we argue that for migrants’ engaged in recreational dance, their experience of acculturation (Berry 1997) can be as much about the pedagogy as it is about the dance form. A learner’s educational values and their feelings of belonging are entwined within their culture (Mingyuan 2006), as the learning habits that children form inevitably influence their beliefs about how to gain social and cultural capital (Bourdieu 1990, 2000). This presents particular expectations when they seek to learn-and-belong within a new cultural context. Within a recreational dance class in a new country, how might a migrant’s construction of belonging be informed by their formative educational experiences? This line of inquiry builds upon previous studies that have explored how the learning habits that Chinese students develop in China can become challenging within new learning contexts abroad (Dai, Lingard, and Musofer 2020).

This article focuses on the experiences of Chinese migrants engaged in diverse types of community dance classes in Aotearoa New Zealand. Through qualitative, semi-structured interviews, we examine how learning expectations that were established within their formative education in China can subsequently influence the ways that they construct a sense of belonging within a community dance class in a new cultural context. By formative learning, we consider how experiences of learning in primary, secondary, or tertiary education in China may have shaped their approach to learning dance in new contexts. Through this innovative lens, this study identifies how their experience of social validation within a recreational dance class can be significantly influenced by their perceptions of learning progress and their sense of comparison with other learners. This presents a distinct departure point from current literature on community arts and social inclusion, which emphasizes the formation of new relationships and cooperative social interdependence as central to the development of belonging (Amans 2017).

Chinese Migrants in Aotearoa New Zealand

Around the world there are currently more than 11 million migrants who were born in China, making them the world’s third-largest foreign-born population (International Organization for Migration 2019). These Chinese migrants have faced challenges such as discrimination, stereotyping, hostile attitudes, and misunderstandings from local residents (Webber, McKinley, and Hattie 2013), but have nevertheless sought to integrate into host countries through engaging in local leisure activities (Wen Li, Hodgetts, and Ho 2010) and connecting with local culture (Wong 2015).

Within the relatively small country of Aotearoa New Zealand, 22% of the population is foreign-born, and Chinese-born individuals make up the second-largest proportion of these new migrants. As one of the main relocating destinations for Chinese people (Poston and Wong 2016), Aotearoa New Zealand has experienced waves of Chinese migration for 150 years, and 5% of the population is now ethnically Chinese (Statistics New Zealand 2018). As the largest city in Aotearoa New Zealand, Auckland is a multicultural environment with a significant migrant population, in which 50.7% of its current residents were born overseas, among which nearly 25% were born in China (Statistics New Zealand 2018). How Chinese people construct a sense of belonging within Auckland is therefore an urgent and growing concern, as many Chinese people continue to experience an environment of exclusion and hostility (Webber, McKinley, and Hattie 2013). While tertiary students from China create the largest proportion of international students in Aotearoa New Zealand (Zhang and Brunton 2007), they continue to struggle as they negotiate their emerging sense of identity (Zhang 2017). Studies have examined how Chinese immigrants have taken practical actions to try to integrate into the mainstream culture of Aotearoa New Zealand (Wong 2015). Nevertheless, there is little scholarship on how dance as a cultural activity might support Chinese immigrants to negotiate a sense of belonging. Within Chinese dance scholarship, such community dance generally refers to “square dancing” or “Guang Chang Wu,” a social practice that broadly involves people gathering in urban public spaces to dance in alignment with each other (Liu and Wu 2018). While this can present different meanings and understandings of community-building from Western discourses (Rowe, Buck, and Martin 2015), it nevertheless extends the idea of dance as a means of fostering a cohesive society.

Constructing a Sense of Belonging in a New Land

The need to form lasting and positive connections to the population, the culture, the environment, and the era in which one is living is central to an individual’s well-being (Ritchie and Gaulter 2020). A sense of belonging allows one to feel accepted, esteemed, valued, and needed (Baumeister and Leary 1995), and to associate this sensation to both people and a place (Degnen 2016). In Aotearoa New Zealand, the indigenous Māori concept of hauora considers this connection to surrounding people and the environment as significant as a connection to one’s mind and body (Chant 2011). While successive government policies in Aotearoa have promoted an inclusive bi-cultural ideal that supports indigenous and migrant culture (Dalziel, Saunders, and Savage 2019), achieving a sense of belonging within a culturally pluralist society remains a complex endeavor. New arrivals in a country are prone to experiences of alienation or exclusion associated with cultural differences (Spaaij 2015), as establishing a feeling of belonging is a complicated, dynamic, situational, multi-layered, and subjective perception (Kreutzmann, Zander, and Webster 2018). While belonging has been described as establishing a secure sense of fitting in, simply assimilating into an established culture and developing positive relationships with other members in a community does not guarantee an individual’s subjective feeling of belonging (Lambert et al. 2013). Belonging further requires a process of integration: a sense that differences rooted in one’s former culture are actively valued by others in the new context (Berry 1997).

This article recognizes that an individual’s sense of belonging does not just happen, but is constructed (Bada 2015). This construction involves an intersubjective interpretation of new information that is influenced by the individuals’ prior knowledge and understandings (Stapleton and Stefaniak 2019). Culture, as part of the environment that forms individual experiences, plays an important role in the construction of individual and collective understandings (Onuf 2013) and in shaping individuals’ cognitive development (Muller, Buchheister, and Boutte 2017). Recreational dance activities can be seen as a communal exploring of a collective identity (Leaf and Ngo 2017) and an individual’s self-cognition in a group (Abrams and Hogg 2010). This in turn might be understood as a sense of belonging, in which questions such as “who do I belong to” (Strayhorn 2018, 3) reflect the interconnection between personal identity and collective identity (Antweiler 2019). Constructing a sense of belonging through dance might therefore involve explorations that move between self-recognition on a personal level and self-recognition on a collective level.

The Construction of Belonging within Learning Environments in China

In cross-cultural learning experiences, a sense of belonging can therefore be constructed through the way we learn, not just the content of that learning. So how might former experiences of learning influence our cognitive associations between belonging and learning?

The participants in this study were all born in China and came to Aotearoa New Zealand after completing high school, and for some, undergraduate degrees in China. It is therefore important to consider how their formative learning experiences in China influenced their meanings of “belonging through learning,” so as to understand how that may inform their perception of dance learning in Aotearoa New Zealand.

While the improvement of social relationships amongst students has been promoted within education literature in China, this literature tends to present it as an aspiration, rather than evidence of how such a sense of belonging amongst peers takes place (Wu and Tan 2020). The development of ongoing informal social connections through the classroom is less considered, as collaborative relationships are ultimately valued as a means of helping students learn from each other and reach common learning goals (Li and Shi 2021). This aligns with mainstream Chinese educational research, which tends to focus on competence and learning progress (Yang 2013). Such literature argues that students’ sense of competence and learning progress directly relates to their sense of belonging within the classroom (Fu, Qu, and Gao 2019). From the view that learning progress occurs when a student advances their competence and capabilities within a particular area of skill or knowledge (Vygotsky 1978), such progress may enable a student to feel that they have been recognized as belonging in the group (Yang 2013). Developing a sense of learning progress is further posited as a means of advancing one’s intercultural competence and interpersonal skills; that “good learners” are proposed as better at adjusting to new cultural contexts and better at developing personal relationships (Yang 2013). This presents particular challenges to the idea of inclusive classrooms. If only “good learners” can gain a sense of belonging, students who do not achieve at the same pace can easily be marginalized (Xin and Jiang 2016) and ostracized by teachers and students as incompetent, lazy, and anti-social (Wang and Zhang 2018).

The importance of students’ learning progress, as a means of gaining belonging, can be even more extreme within dance learning environments in China, which can be deeply hierarchical between students and teachers and amongst students. Particularly within secondary and tertiary dance education programs in China, a student’s sense of value within the classroom can be very dependent upon their sense of achievement as a dance student (Rowe, Xiong, and Heyang 2020). The association between learning competence and a sense of belonging might therefore be considered as a key cultural influence in this research. This influence stems from formative educational experiences, and might contribute to how adult learners construct their sense of belonging in new learning contexts. As all of the research participants in this study completed their formative learning years in China, their sense of learning competence might influence the way that they approach belonging in a dance class as adult learners in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Methodology

This phenomenological qualitative research project (Merleau-Ponty 1996) sought to understand the lived experience of constructing a sense of belonging in dance classes. To gain such phenomenological insights, the research engaged in a series of semi-structured interviews (Longhurst 2003). We sought research participants who might self-identify as a dance learner, and a broad and inclusive meaning of a Chinese migrant, accepting any individual of any age who might have spent formative years in China and now lived in Auckland. Our participants responded to a general call presented within five recreational dance classes, and were selected as they fit the general profile outline above. This resulted in a very diverse group of seven interviewees, whose ages range from 26 to 69, and who have been living in Aotearoa New Zealand and outside of China from 6 months to 30 years. They all participate in adult dance classes in local dance studios, in different contexts and styles, including Chinese ethnic and folk dance, hip-hop, tango, and contemporary dance. As the goal was gathering stories and experiences that provided distinct and rich responses to the enquiry (Sargeant 2012) in ways that might reveal deeper meanings, within this article we present the voices of five research participants, who have been given the pseudonyms Yan, Chen, Qiu, Geisel, and Claire. To get in-depth stories, two rounds of interviews were conducted under the auspices of The University of Auckland’s Human Participants Ethics Committee in the last three months of 2019. The interviews were conducted in Mandarin by one of the authors, who was positioned as an insider (Breen 2007) within the study, as a migrant from China who was engaging in recreational dance classes in Auckland. The transcriptions were provided to the interviewees, along with translations of these transcriptions into English. This review process recognized the autonomy of the research participants (Hagens, Dobrow, and Chafe 2009). Responding via e-mail, the interviewees supplemented some of the information they felt they missed during face-to-face interviews. This led into a thematic analysis, to allow for a thorough and deliberate analysis of the data (Braun and Clarke 2014). This thematic analysis gave rise to emergent themes associated with the lived experience of belonging, which were then interpreted through a constructivist lens and connected with theories of belonging (Pritchard and Woollard 2013).

The following stories identify the importance of learning progress to these interviewee participants, how it connects to their sense of belonging, and how this connection might have been culturally constructed. They then discuss their sense of learning progress, particularly how they identify their own deficits as learners in comparison to other students, and how this impacts their sense of belonging. Within the final section, the interviewees reflect on how they feel other students perceive them as learners, and how the self-esteem that emerges impacts their sense of belonging.

“It is very important for me to improve”: Progress and Belonging

Connection between learning progress and a sense of belonging repeatedly emerged from the interviewees. Yan emphasized the importance of learning as a mechanism for growing a sense of belonging:

This dance group can be said to be an important part of my life … it is very important for me to improve my dance ability. Therefore, every time I made any progress, I would be particularly happy, which made me more attached to this group, promoting my continuous improvement.

As Yan noted, personal growth is a key motivator for her, and influential in developing her sense of belonging to the group. All of the interviewees emphasized that self-improvement was a central rationale for their participation in dance classes. That is, none of the interviewees were dancing for purely social reasons or to maintain a certain level of ability; they all sought to enhance an aspect of their dance ability within the classes (Rafferty and Stanton 2017). Geisel expressed:

The main reason that I choose a school is because of the dancing itself: if the school meets my learning needs and helps me to make progress.

While this interest in their own learning needs and expectation of learning progress was shared by the interviewees, this interest and expectation is not necessarily a universal phenomenon amongst students attending dance classes. Not all people attending dance classes might be so concerned about improving their dancing ability; some might want to just stay generally fit and have fun in a social environment (Maraz et al. 2015). This raises questions as to what learning and progression actually feels like for the interviewees, why it feels like that, and how this sense of learning progress is relevant to a sense of belonging.

Exploring such questions might start with a consideration of how the interviewees’ desire to progress as dancers might have been culturally constructed. Research into learning in China suggests that learning progress is often promoted as a key motivation for students to continue learning (Lu 2012). Research argues that formal education systems in China place a heavy emphasis on student achievement (Liu 2017). Moreover, a sense of comparison may be distinct for learners from China, as formal education systems have instilled in young learners a sense that their worthiness to belong within a classroom is dependent on their learning competence within that classroom (Sun and Su 2008). These formal educations systems have also encouraged students to compare their own progress against fellow learners, and even compete with fellow learners to feel more worthwhile (Wu 2018).

Culturally distinct approaches to formal dance education within China have also been identified, including the maintenance of authoritarian teaching practices, and competitive and comparative learning mind-set amongst students (Rowe, Xiong, and Heyang 2020). How the participants understand meanings of “dance learning” might therefore have been influenced by both the learning mind-sets of broader education prevalent in China and specifically by that of dance education in China. Ultimately, these mind-sets may continue on within their approach to dance classes in new countries and cultural contexts, impacting the way that they construct belongingness through a dance class. This extends upon arguments that educational values can be established within one particular cultural context, and that Chinese learners have particular expectations (Watkins and Biggs 2001). Moreover, a student’s learning expectations can be confronted when they move into new cultural contexts, deepening a sense of alienation (Liu 2016). As such, a student’s sense of learning-identity in a particular cultural context can have a considerable influence on their desire to continue learning in that context (Carter et al. 2018). In this way, it could be argued that how a person perceives learning can impact on how they construct a sense of belonging. This opens space for further research that might examine how the learning of dance might involve reconstructing the broader values that migrants associate with learning.

Across the interviewees, a sense of comparison with other learners repeatedly emerged as a means of gauging their learning progress, and a rationale for belonging. Reflecting on a class in which she felt she was not progressing as well as the other students, Claire expressed how “I felt that I do not belong to them in that moment.”

Several stories of the interviewees reflected that their worthiness to be part of the class rested on their sense of ability relative to the other students, or at least on their learning progression relative to the other students. This presents an interesting dimension within the construction of belonging, a dimension that sits beyond the ways that dance teachers, dance styles, or other dance students might affect an individual’s sense of belonging. Ultimately, the construction of belonging in a dance class can rely upon how a student perceives their own abilities as a learner, in comparison with other learners.

“I am not good as others”: A Sense of Comparison

Through a sense of learning progress, the interviewees felt that they were enhancing their sense of belonging within the class. Their understanding of learning progress, and its association with their sense of belonging, was generally referenced in relation to how they perceived their own abilities compared to the abilities of other dancer learners in the class (Akerlof 2017). This sense of comparison sometimes involved their perceptions of their own dancing problems and their need to address these deficits to fit in (Nordin-Bates et al. 2011). This sense of belonging-through-progress can relate to a growth in specific technical skills, as Chen explained:

I have learned many modern dance technical skills here. Though these technical skills seemed simple, I always did the floor movements differently from other students, which made me worry that I am not as good as others. I realized that I needed to work hard to catch up with others. Through observing others for a long time, I found out that it is because where the exertion comes from is different. For example, for one action, I thought it comes from the strength of arms and thighs, but others just contracted their abdominal muscles. After a long-time practicing, I adapted to this way of working my body. While my improvement was slow, I felt a strong sense of achievement after I saw I really had changed and improved. This progress contributed to my sense of belonging in this group.

As much previous research has identified, Chen’s acknowledged desire to achieve a specific goal helped her to persist and achieve that goal (Harackiewicz et al. 2002). This task-orientation approach within learning can contribute to self-reported use of skill development strategies such as extra practice and persistence (Lochbaum and Roberts 1993). While Chen described how this subsequently made her feel a greater sense of belonging within the group, it might be argued that such self-motivation was prompted by a desire to fit into the group. This raises questions as to how this need to conform to the capabilities of the other learners might have been culturally constructed.

Through a process of comparison, Chen identified that she was “not as good as others,” and that she needed to improve to enhance her “sense of belonging in this group.” This experience of social comparison can lead to strong feelings of insecurity and inferiority within learning contexts (Micari and Pazos 2014), leading to increased anxiety (Dijkstra et al. 2008), and can diminish a dance student’s motivation (Carr and Wyon 2003). Chen describes, however, that her desire to fit in served to increase her motivation. This might connect with her wider sense of being a cultural outsider, a migrant. She reflects that,

… foreigners seemed to do this easily. I often wanted to give up during the training process, I was so frustrated in class during the first few weeks. But I needed to master these dance challenges and did not want to seem incapable. So I practiced those movements after class, and gradually found that I am able to complete those movements more easily and not feel so tired. As I became stronger, I felt I am not so distinct from the other students, and felt more that I belonged to this dance group.

The mastering of a particular dance activity provided Chen with a sense of confidence (Quested and Duda 2009), which in turn enhanced her sense that she was worthy to belong to this particular group. This sense of mastery ultimately involved a process of comparison to others in the group, rather a measurement against a standard (Akerlof 2017), as group belonging had become a meaningful rationale for learning progress. For migrants experiencing acculturation, this sense of achievement in relation to the achievements of others might be perceived as one of the unwritten rules of belonging (Onuf 2013); for Chen, being “distinct from the other students” suggested she did not understand the unwritten rules of the culture, and that this presented a barrier to feeling her own sense of belonging.

While for some of the interviewees this sense of learning progress meant passing a shared competence threshold with the group, others felt a sense of learning progress by being distinctive within the group. As Claire reflects, identifying personal strengths served to compensate for particular deficits, providing a similar sense of belonging in the group.

I think dance techniques have also influenced my sense of belonging in the group, because they might be my impressive mark in this group. For example, my jumping ability is not very good, so that every time when I learn jumping steps, I become very anxious. I feel that I am slower than others. This experience reinforces to me that I am bad at dancing, and I feel so sad about this. But my flexibility is quite good, so when we do movements requiring flexibility, I always learn faster than others. So, throughout the learning and practicing time, I would make more significant progress than others. This significant progress always brings me great confidence, and lets me feel that I am not bad as I thought, and I feel I have esteem in the group, and hence I feel a sense of belonging.

While a comparison with the skills and abilities of others in the group remained in the foreground of Claire’s reflections, through using both upward and downward social comparison (Micari and Pazos 2014) she managed to feel a sense of equilibrium when comparing her learning progress to the progress of the other learners. It should be noted that Claire’s upward and downward social comparison did not relate to particular leaners in the group that she felt she was below or above (thereby constructing a class hierarchy); her sense of comparison focused on particular skills (jumps and flexibility) that she felt she was generally better or worse at than the group as a whole. When considered holistically, Claire recognized that she may not ever feel indistinct from the other learners (as Chen hoped for), but that the positives and negatives of her distinctiveness as a learner balanced sufficiently to allow her to gain a sense of worthiness within the group.

Through these reflections, both Chen and Claire were considering their comparative worthiness within their groups as a process of self-conceptualization, which had been generated through a process of social interaction (González-Pienda et al. 1997). This self-conceptualization contributed to their sense of self-esteem, their thoughts and feelings about their own worth and importance (Rosenberg 2015), and stemmed from their sense of achievement as learners (Choi 2005). It might be further argued that this self-esteem was extended through the recognition that they experienced from others in the group. That is, how they felt others in the group viewed them was an important part of their comparative self-analysis.

“My progress and growth were seen and recognized”: The Esteem of Others

While the interviewees shared several stories of how the communications from other learners impacted their sense of belonging during class, they also reflected on their desire to be valued by others (Akerlof 2017) was central to their experience of belonging. This particularly focused on a desire to have peer esteem directed toward their progress as learners. As Qiu expressed, “I found that when my progress and growth was seen and recognized by others, my sense of belonging was quite strong.”

Such group recognition of learning progress might be considered as important as a teacher’s recognition of learning, when a goal of the learning is to construct a sense of belonging. This again might align with specific cultural values of collectivism (Dalziel, Saunders, and Savage 2019), that can inform an educational expectation that one fits in amongst the other learners (Kuang and Lei 2012). This group recognition of learning progress might also be considered as distinct from a group’s recognition of an individual’s existing ability. That progress has been made whilst within the group presents a positive affirmation of the value of the group on the individual learner; a form of social feedback that generally affirms the value of all involved (Freeman, Anderman, and Jensen 2007).

As Yan shares in the following, the acknowledgment of her learning progress by her peers helped affirm her sense of value within the group. Her desire to feel that her learning progress continues at the age of 67, and to feel other learners acknowledge this progress, emphasizes the significance of learning progress and peer esteem.

The coordination and aesthetics of body movements are an essential aspect of dance that I have always pursued. Hence, improvements are quite important to me. … Every time I conquer a technical skill, I have a sense of achievement. At the next rehearsal, I show my progress to my team members and share my happiness about my improvement with them. This makes me I feel I am irreplaceable in this group. This kind of experience helps me feel a stronger sense of belonging in this group.

Yan’s story aligns with research on elderly dancers, which suggests that a desire for self-improvement through dance can be lifelong (Higdon and Stevens 2017). As Yan suggested within this story, however, gaining the acknowledgment of peers can be an important part of this process, not just as a stimulant for further learning, but to actually construct a sense of belonging. She identified that sharing both her progress and her enthusiasm about her progress, consolidates her sense of belonging in the group.

That Yan considers her learning progress as central to feeling “irreplaceable” does suggest how precarious her age and position within the group might feel. Through this statement, she implies that she conceives the possibility of being replaced, particularly if one’s learning fails to continue to progress. This again might emerge from a culturally informed understanding of education and dance education, an understanding that deeply values continual achievement in learning (Boud and Soler 2016). It might also relate to a concern that as one ages, one becomes more invisible within society, and that dancing achievements provide a means of remaining visible and valued.

Amongst the interviewees, seeking such positive affirmation from peer learners about one’s progress was not always central to constructing a sense of belonging. As suggested by Qiu, when value judgments about fellow learners was suspended, she experienced a sense of comfort and security, which affected her sense of belonging in the group.

This type of dance was not very strict. There were no specific rules for what is right or wrong in the dance steps. So when we were learning or practicing tango, we were not likely to evaluate good or bad. This led us not to judge others. In fact, everyone felt that they danced very well, and this dance gave us great confidence. In this sense, tango brought me a sense of belonging for it not only gave me confidence in this dance group, but also created a harmonious atmosphere.

Qiu reflected that this dance group was non-judgmental, contributing to a “harmonious atmosphere” and her sense of belonging. Dance classes have been described as a highly judgmental activity, actively involving various evaluative standpoints including aesthetic judgment, self-judgment, peer judgment, faculty judgment, and audience judgment (Walker, Nordin‐Bates, and Redding 2010). This can contribute to a sense of anxiety associated with fears of negative judgment from others (Carleton, Collimore, and Gordon 2010). For Qiu, experiencing a dance class that did not incorporate such an emphasis on judgment from others was critical to her feeling both a sense of learning progress and belonging. She went on, “My self-confidence was formed in such an environment of tolerance.” While she enjoyed others observing her learning accomplishments, her experience of such peer acknowledgment is intricate and perhaps related to specific contexts and circumstances.

This brings a complexity to the idea of peer esteem and learning progress, and its relationship to the construction of belonging. The idea of judgment of learning progress has been promoted as a crucial means of stimulating learning progress (Tai et al. 2018), and that peer evaluation is central to both this learning progression and to developing peer relationships (Van den Berg, Admiraal, and Pilot 2006). Such peer judgment might, however, debilitate a sense of belonging for some individuals in some dance learning contexts. For dance students who (like Qiu) may already feel a sense of cultural marginalization through their experience of being a migrant, simply dancing with new people and not feeling assessed by them might be important to the construction of belonging. This opens questions as to how, why, when, and where such feedback might support a sense of belonging for diverse types of students. While such queries are beyond the scope of this research, the experiences and reflections of these interviewees suggest that this an issue of critical importance to the development of belonging through dance classes.

Conclusion

The experiences shared by the interviewees within this study reveal that a sense of belonging within a dance class can be associated with how a learner perceives their learning progress in the class. The participants generally expressed an enthusiasm for learning progress, and that a desire to enhance their dancing ability was a central reason for their attendance of dance classes. They further identified that their sense of progress was deeply comparative, and involved measuring themselves against the progress and abilities of other learners in the class. This sense of comparison informed their self-concept and self-esteem as dance learners, which contributed to their sense of belonging. The interviewees further discussed the way that others in the class viewed their learning progress was also central to their development of a sense of belonging. This was a complicated issue, however, as dance learning contexts in which peer evaluation was suspended were also valued for contributing to a sense of belonging.

The interviewees’ experiences also expressed associations between their current learning expectations and their previous learning experiences in China. While this article does not have space to explore the depth of this connection, the reflections of these interviewees suggest that this is an area that is worthy of further research. For scholars and practitioners interested in the ways in which recreational dance may foster a greater sense of inclusion for migrants, such a line of enquiry is salient.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.