<p>Belonging is often treated in development policy as a secondary, affective outcome of economic participation. This study challenges that assumption by arguing that belonging operates as a structuring condition that precedes and shapes recognition, rather than emerging as a by-product of participation. Focusing on rural India, where informal labour, caste hierarchies, and limited institutional access intersect, it examines how the marginalization of belonging within skill development frameworks reproduces social and economic exclusion. Drawing on qualitative evidence from two focus group discussions (FGDs) with forty-one rural youth and three key informants in Moti-Borvai, Gujarat, the study analyses how caste, gender, and informal skills shape pathways into work and conditions of social legitimacy. The findings indicate that exclusion operates at both material and symbolic levels. Caste functions as an often-unspoken boundary shaping access to employment, while gendered norms restrict women’s mobility and frame belonging in terms of domestic roles. At the same time, locally acquired informal skills are systematically devalued within institutional systems that privilege formal credentials, producing competence without recognition. In response, the study develops the Belonging-Recognition-Justice (BRJ) Framework, which conceptualizes livelihood inclusion through alignment between social legitimacy, institutional recognition, and redistributive justice. This framework offers an empirically grounded approach that explains exclusion even where skills are present, addressing a key limitation in dominant skill-based frameworks, with implications for inclusive development in rural India and across the Global South.</p>