Experiencing ‘moments of home’ through diaspora tourism and travel

Y Wladfa Gymreig: outbound diasporic tourism and contribution to identity

“…Indeed, it is clear that diasporic identity is indeed a continual process of becoming, rather than a fixed one (Hall, 1990), also echoing Baldassar's (2001) concept of migration in its dynamic properties as 'migrancy'. Thus the articulation of 'home' is far from being fixed or permanent in the tourism context, as echoed in the recent work by Etemaddar et al (2016) discussed above. Therefore this study confirms that diasporic tourism is a dynamic contributor to all three aspects suggested by Bond's & Falk (2013) in terms of identity development, identity maintenance and identity moderation and reconstruction.…”

“…One of the authors then travelled to Argentina to conduct a detailed ethnographic observation of Welsh tourism in Patagonia. Much of the identity research to date has utilised ethnographic methods for their ability to uncover the nuanced and personal nature of identity construction (for example Desforges, 2000;Etemaddar et al, 2016;Hall, 1990), which would be beyond quantitative explanation. Research tools during this trip included field notes, a research diary, photographs, informal conversations and semi-structured in-depth interviews with Welsh tourists in Argentina (n=11) The researcher also addressed issues of authenticity and commodification of culture and tradition in the interviews and discovered individual's experiences and emotions.…”

Chain tourism in post-disaster recovery

“…Family vacations provide quality time together away from the distractions of daily life (Shaw et al, 2008). Family heritage and place attachment also serve as motivating factors for family leisure travel as tourists seek journeys to ancestral and familial homes (Etemaddar et al, 2016; Marschall, 2015; Quinn and Ryan, 2019). These journeys are made by survivors and their descendants who were forcibly removed from their homes due to disasters or political unrest and often result in a diaspora where individuals live outside of their traditional homeland (Etemaddar et al, 2016).…”

“…Family heritage and place attachment also serve as motivating factors for family leisure travel as tourists seek journeys to ancestral and familial homes (Etemaddar et al, 2016; Marschall, 2015; Quinn and Ryan, 2019). These journeys are made by survivors and their descendants who were forcibly removed from their homes due to disasters or political unrest and often result in a diaspora where individuals live outside of their traditional homeland (Etemaddar et al, 2016). Sudden, extreme events that permanently alter the landscape disrupt strong place attachments (Brown and Perkins, 1992), leaving survivors to long for the places they knew and loved prior to the event (Erikson, 1976), and motivating survivors and their descendants to (re)experience the sense of place of an altered landscape, (re)establish a direct relationship with the locale, and (re)connect personal accounts to the larger historic experience (Marschall, 2015).…”

Guanxi or weak ties? Exploring Chinese diaspora tourists’ engagements in social capital building

“…Many recent studies have noted that return travel provides migrants with a transformative experience by connecting them physically, culturally and socially to their ancestral home (Alexander, Bryce, & Murdy, 2017;Weaver et al, 2017;Huang, King, & Suntikul, 2017). Although some of these studies have engaged with the social functions of diasporic return in one way or another (Marschall, 2017;Pelliccia, 2018;Li & Chan, 2017), the links between diaspora tourism and social capital have been insufficiently discussed despite the growing popularity of home return trips (Gafter & Tchetchik, 2017;Etemaddar, Duncan, & Tucker, 2016).…”