Making sense of belonging and absence: A hermeneutic study of organizational belonging anxiety among first-generation learners from rural backgrounds

Belonging within organizations is often assumed to be a stable outcome of formal inclusion practices, yet for individuals from marginalized social locations it is frequently experienced as fragile and uncertain. This study explores the lived meaning of organizational belonging anxiety among first-generation learners from rural backgrounds. Adopting a phenomenological—hermeneutical approach inspired by Ricoeur, the study interprets narratives of everyday organizational participation to elucidate how belonging and absence are experienced and made meaningful. In-depth narrative interviews were conducted with first-generation rural employees working in diverse organizational contexts, and the texts were analyzed through naïve reading, structural interpretation, and comprehensive understanding. The findings reveal organizational belonging anxiety as a persistent, anticipatory orientation toward organizational life, characterized by vigilance, silence, gratitude-inflected endurance, and burdened aspiration. Belonging was experienced as conditional and reversible, shaped by unequal access to informal networks, tacit knowledge, and symbolic recognition. Rather than reflecting individual insecurity, organizational belonging anxiety emerged as a relational and biographically informed response to organizational participation under conditions of cultural mismatch and social mobility. By conceptualizing belonging anxiety as a life-world phenomenon, the study extends organizational research on inclusion and highlights the value of phenomenological—hermeneutical inquiry for understanding marginalized work experiences.