Rhizomatic Explorations of Immigrant Growers’ Sense of Belonging Through More-than-Human Relationships in a Community Garden

Immigrant integration is often conceptualised through frameworks of belonging that emphasise individual feelings or perceived acceptance within a community. This paper complicates such linear models and human-centred interactions by foregrounding processes of belonging emerging through relational practices spanning more-than-human worlds at a community urban farm. Drawing on rhizomatic assemblages and Indigenous epistemologies that situate Land as agentive, we use ethnographic and participatory methods to highlight how growers’ relationships with crops manifest agency and dynamic socio-ecological adaptations. In conclusion, we argue that processes of belonging and settlement are active negotiations that occur through placemaking relationships with the land and the immediate multispecies community. Attending to these processes provides newer possibilities for recognising the interactions between more-than-human actors and human agency to belong.