This paper engages with the notion of ‘embodied belonging’ through an ethnography of the social and material aspects of accessing mental health care in the UK. I focus on moments of access and transition in a voluntary sector organisation in London: an intercultural psychotherapy centre, serving a range of im/migrant communities. Whilst both ‘belonging’ and ‘place’ are often invoked to imply stability, I explore how material contexts of access and inclusion can paradoxically be implicated in the ongoing production of precarity—of unstable, uncertain, and vulnerable ways of being. A sociomaterial analysis of ethnographic material and visual data from two creative mapping interviews attends to material and spatial aspects of the centre and its transitory place in the urban environment. It demonstrates how these aspects of place became entangled in client experiences of access: uncertainties of waiting, ambivalence towards belonging to a particular client group, and questions around deservingness of care. This engendered an embodied and situated experience of ‘precarious belonging’. I therefore argue that precarity should be ‘placed’, both within the concept of embodied belonging, and ethnographically, within the material constraints, impermanence, and spatial politics of projects to include the excluded in UK mental health care.

本文通过对英国获得精神卫生保健的社会和物质方面的人种学研究，探讨了“具体归属感”的概念。我专注于伦敦的一个志愿部门组织的进入和过渡时刻：一个跨文化心理治疗中心，为一系列移民/移民社区提供服务。虽然“归属”和“地方”这两个词经常被用来暗示稳定，但我探索了获取和包容的物质背景如何与不稳定的持续生产——不稳定、不确定和脆弱的存在方式——产生矛盾。对来自两次创意制图采访的人种学材料和视觉数据的社会材料分析关注中心的材料和空间方面及其在城市环境中的短暂位置。它展示了地方的这些方面如何与客户的访问体验纠缠在一起：等待的不确定性，对属于特定客户群体的矛盾心理，以及关于是否值得照顾的问题。这产生了“不稳定的归属感”的具体化和情境化体验。因此，我认为，不稳定应该被“置于”，无论是在具体归属的概念中，还是在人种学上，都应置于物质限制、无常性和项目的空间政治中，以将被排除在外的人纳入英国精神卫生保健。