Repetitive Visiting as a Pre‐return Transnational Strategy among Youthful Trinidadian Returnees

Abstract

Building upon existing Caribbean research by Condon and Duval, we assess how repetitive visiting is, or is not, important to youthful return migrants in their 30s and 40s, who have decided to return more permanently to Trinidad. Is it influential in their social and economic adaptations on return, and does this transnational practice lead to a more permanent return? Our analysis is based on 40 detailed narratives which were collected in 2004-2005. For some returnees, repetitive visiting is influential, for others one visit is enough and for a few, it makes no difference. Yet it is certainly a common practice for 'keeping in touch' among our transnational informants.

Impacts of diaspora travel on ethnic identity development among 1.5 generation Korean-American college students

“…In a somewhat similar vein, Palmer (1999) examined the relationship between heritage tourism and national identity among English travelers and concluded that heritage tourism is a powerful force in constructing and maintaining national identity. These findings were substantiated by Stephenson (2002) and Conway, Potter, and Bernard (2009) who examined personal attachments of West Indians in Manchester, England and Trinidadians who immigrated to the USA and Canada. Stephenson (2002) argued that ethnic reunions allowed members of culturally displaced communities to renew or reconstruct personal associations with their ancestral homelands.…”

Trouble at home: diasporic second homes as leisure space across generations

“…Focusing on ethnographic exploration of practice as a mean to understand how DVs engage with the 'homeland' contrasts with most previous work on this topic, much of which is based primarily, if not exclusively, on interviews (e.g. Conway, Potter, and Bernard 2009;Duval 2003Duval , 2004aKing and Christou 2009;Stephenson 2002). Though home ownership was not the central theme of this project, it was one that frequently arose in relation to…”

“…That is, migrant return may be characterized through literature on migration, transnationalism and diaspora (Glick Schiller and Fouron 2001;Levitt and Waters 2002;Levitt 2002) or equally approached through literature on visiting friends and relative (VFR) tourism (Butler 2003;Feng and Page 2000) or 'roots' tourism and the 'myth of return' (Ali and Holden 2006;Basu 2004). More recently, diasporic return (as visit or as permanent) is taking on a distinct literature of its own (Conway, Potter, and Bernard 2009;Duval 2003;Duval 2004a;King and Christou 2009;Potter, Conway, and Phillips 2005;Stephenson 2002), that is developing the specific perspective of more recent migrations and their potentials for return in an age of easy access to mobility. Overall, these literatures have a common attention to the seemingly paradoxical nature of being 'on tour' while 'at home' through the widely reported feeling by migrants and postmigrant generation visitors of feeling attachment to the place with reference to specific aspects, like their family history or a sense of ancestral identity, but often not feeling a sense of belonging because of negative experiences there.…”

Return Visits as a Marker of Differentiation in the Social Field

“…The visit may be viewed as a vacation, may be motivated by a specific family function (Baldassar 2001(Baldassar , 1995, or may be carried out to assess the opportunities for a permanent return (Duval 2004;Muggeridge and Dona 2006;Conway, Potter, and Bernard 2009). It can also be multifunctional , combining family obligations with return assessments.…”