Literary review in literary studies on the notion of belonging has primarily focused on inclusion and exclusion in literary texts. Earlier studies focused on marginalized groups and their quest for and articulation of belonging in dominant cultures. For example, African Americans or postcolonial migrants belonging in Euro-Western cultures. These studies looked at themes of assimilation, acculturation, and hybridity. While illuminating the cultural processes of belonging, these studies failed to examine belonging as a fluid and contested notion. Recent studies have addressed this shortcoming by examining belonging as constructed and negotiated through complex power dynamics. They show how categories of inclusion and exclusion are unstable and shift across time and space.Belonging emerges at the intersection of self-identification and social ascription.These studies examine multiple axes of difference that shape belonging such as gender, sexuality, class, disability in addition to race and ethnicity. They destabilize the self/other binary that informed earlier studies.Belonging is conceptualized as a continuum rather than an either/or. Individuals occupy in-between spaces, belong in partial and fragmented ways. Globalization and transnational flows further complicate belonging which can no longer be tied to a particular national space. Deterritorialized belongings emerge through virtual spaces, imagined communities, and diasporic connections. Everyday practices of language, food, music, religion become ways to connect to a "home" that is no longer geographically fixed. Belonging is thus deterritorialized but also reterritorialized in new ways. While recent studies have produced more nuanced understandings of belonging, further research is needed. Intersectional approaches need to be extended to examine how different axes of difference intersect in shaping belonging. Transnational and virtual spaces of belonging need more in-depth exploration. The role of spatial mobility and new media in reconfiguring belongings across geographic borders needs analysis. Overall, the notion of belonging itself needs to be further destabilized and denaturalized. Belonging emerges as a discursive construct and a site of power struggles rather than a pregiven entity. This can open up spaces for negotiating new kinds of belongings in the contemporary globalized world.