Navigating community work practices: boundary demarcation strategies in contexts of informality

Community social work practice increasingly relies on informal, low-threshold interactions to foster conviviality in highly diverse communities. Yet little is known about how community members themselves actively foster and undermine conviviality in these informal settings. Specifically, this article examines how symbolic and social boundaries are demarcated, revealing in- and outgroup dynamics in an urban community centre in Flanders, the northern region of Belgium. Our findings show that community members construct boundaries in two interrelated ways. First, they use categorical distinctions based on visible traits such as disabilities, poor hygiene, and the headscarf. Second, as relationships intensify, community members use deservingness criteria – control, attitude, reciprocity, identity, and need – to make more fine–grained evaluations of who belongs and on what terms. These symbolic boundaries shift in substance through increased familiarity, and shape patterns of avoidance, group formation, and social membership. This study contributes to social work scholarship by revealing the relational complexities and tensions embedded in informal practices intended to foster conviviality, showing how boundary work unfolds in everyday encounters, while offering practitioners insights into the subtle mechanisms through which exclusion can occur in everyday interactions.