Belonging for autistic people: A scoping review informed by Greek autistic voices

Belonging is a fundamental yet underexplored concept in relation to autistic people, whose opportunities to experience and negotiate belonging are shaped through complex relational, contextual, and occupational transactions within everyday life. This study aimed to map and synthesise current knowledge and conceptualisations of belonging for autistic people, and to explore Greek autistic adults’ perspectives on existing understandings through their experiential knowledge. A scoping review methodology was employed following Arksey and O’Malley’s (Citation2005) six-stage framework, situated within a qualitative, interpretive paradigm, informed by a contextualism stance. Consultations with Greek autistic adults (n = 10) as knowledge contributors were conducted through semi-structured interviews to situate, inform, and extend the preliminary findings within the Greek socio-cultural context. Data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis, while knowledge contributors’ data were deductively integrated into the overall synthesis. The literature search yielded 4,472 hits, of which 18 publications were included in the review. Based on the integration of the findings from the review and consultations, four themes were identified: ‘Navigating belonging with an autistic identity’, ‘Co-constructing belonging within and across neurotypes’, ‘Enacting belonging through relationships’, and ‘Enacting belonging across contexts through life transitions’. Belonging for autistic people was illuminated as a dynamic, relational, and transactional phenomenon shaped by identity and agency, embedded in sociocultural contexts, situated within relationships and environments, and enacted through occupations. This study advances a transactional and justice-oriented understanding of belonging by challenging prefigured possibilities for belonging, highlighting its situated and contested nature and embracing neurodivergent enactments of belonging, thereby reconfiguring what it means to belong for autistic people.