Between and Beyond: Negotiating Belonging Within Queer Borderlands

ABSTRACT Belonging is an affective, social and biopolitical phenomenon which is relationally negotiated and which produces material and symbolic ‘borders’. Subsequently, the politics of belonging refers to the construction, maintenance and policing of the borders of belonging. In the shadow of borders are queer borderlands, in‐between and liminal spaces inhabited by borderlanders who do not fit neatly within sociopolitical regimes. In the European semi‐periphery, the national borderlands remain crucial arenas of negotiation for LGBTQ+ borderlanders. This article focuses on how LGBTQ+ people in the European semi‐periphery negotiate, subvert and occasionally create new belongings from the queer borderlands. Using interview and ethnographic materials generated with LGBTQ+ communities in Belgrade between 2020 and 2025, I explore ‘de‐national’ reappropriation as a means of queering and thus reclaiming national belonging from the margins. This new politics of belonging speaks to deep coalition building as a practice that can be witnessed in LGBTQ+ activism in Serbia and the 2024–2025 student protests.