What ideas of belonging are shown in the painting Unemployment by Ben Shahn, 1938?

I think that it is extremely important to understand
Shahn's background when examining his portrait, "Unemployment."  Shahn was a firm
advocate for workers' rights and a staunch believer that all individuals will find
success if they understand each others' predicaments and seek to broaden understanding
of one another.  This is part of the reason why he became an artist of the New Deal,
being commissioned to compose murals and frescoes that emphasize ideas that are
associated with the New Deal.  We see this in Shahn's portrait.  All of the individuals
in the portrait look strikingly similar, with eyes gazed on a distant point attracting
all of them.  Perhaps, the vision upon which they are fixated is an end to what is being
experienced.  They come from different walks of life, as one is injured, another one of
color, and all of them bear some level of difference.  Yet, the social and economic
contexts of the time make them the same, and this might be where Shahn's point is the
most powerful.  The essence of America during the Great Depression was that capitalism
ends up hurting everyone in much the same way, with the exception of the richest 1%. 
This belonging  is one where material reality, the essence of capitalism, is a setting
where most people end up feeling the same pinches, enduring the same struggles, and find
some level of commonality and solidarity in their predicaments.