Genealogy Tourism

Abstract

Genealogy tourism is a specific type of tourism that involves travelling to destinations to which the tourist is connected by family or ancestral origin. Genealogy tourism is also known as ancestral tourism or roots tourism (see the entry ‘Roots Tourism’ in this Encyclopedia). Influenced by emotional connection and affective memory, thousands of people travel every year to meet people or find places imagined from a blend of memories, family stories and myths. The trip may include distant destinations that they have abandoned sometime in the past, from which they were forcibly removed, or where they have never been. Tourists (re)visit countries, cities, towns and neighbourhoods, ruins, memorials and diverse places of historical resonance, but also private and sometimes anonymous or secret places known or referred to only by the family. Individuals search for traces, street names, nicknames, houses and objects, traditions, smells, colours, textures and flavours of personal relevance that they incorporate into the ways they construct their identity and the self.