In the era of advanced communication and transportation technology, immigrants and
their descendents can be reunited with their ancestral land from where they or their
forebears once were displaced. Visiting the ancestral land as tourists, or "roots tourism,"
is a major and easily accessible means through which people can recreate and retain the
social ties with their ancestral communities. Roots tourism is loosely defined as a type of
tourism in which ethnic minorities visit their ancestral lands to discover ethnic roots and
culture. Despite the recent popularity of this type of tourism, many gaps remain in the
research of roots tourism especially about its influence on ones' identity and sense of
home among second generation of immigrants. Therefore, the purpose of this
dissertation is to explore the experiences of visiting ancestral land among second
generation immigrants. For the purpose of this study, I focus on experiences of roots
tourism among Chinese Americans. By investigating their motivation to visit their
ancestral land, experiences and encounters in their ancestral land, and feelings toward
the ancestral land and toward the United States after the visit, I attempt to explore how roots tourism influences ways in which second generation define and redefine who they
are and where they belong under the transnationalism. Face-to-face, in-depth interviews
with forty Chinese Americans revealed that, contrary to the idea that roots tourism
generates strong feelings of belonging to one's ancestral land, a majority of the
interviewees in this study felt foreign in their ancestral land. Although they felt a certain
sense of connection to China or Taiwan, the feeling was overwhelmed by the differences
in language, norms, class, culture, upbringing, citizenship, and family and gender
composition. Analysis indicated that among forty interviewees, only three interviewees
felt a sense of belonging to their ancestral society after their visit, and the rest of the
interviewees realized their home is the United States. This study revealed the limitation
of roots tourism as a tool to foster an identity and sense of home attached to the tourists'
ancestral land. At the same time, the findings also suggest that roots tourism played a
significant role to assist the interviewees to develop a positive sense of being Chinese
Americans.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/ETD-TAMU-2009-05-489 |
| Date | 2009 May 1900 |
| Creators | Ueda (Maruyama), Naho |
| Contributors | Stronza, Amanda |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Dissertation, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
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