Ancestral tourism: at the intersection of roots journeys and genealogy research

Abstract

Ancestral tourism is a popular activity for amateur genealogists interested in tracing their family lineage and experiencing affective connections with a tangible personal past. Nowadays, technologies such as mobile applications, digital archive deposits and online platforms for making virtual family trees facilitate the ancestral tourist experience. Ancestral tourism is also growing as a niche form of tourism at the destination-level with communities, regions and national destination management organizations alike seeking to attract tourists with relevant descendance through homecoming events and branding strategies. Tourism researchers have made considerable progress conceptualizing the ancestral tourist experience and its role in identity formation. However, there is still room to study the performative and narrative work shaping the ancestral tourist experience. I suggest that further research should investigate the role of local genealogists, family members, and community-members in the co-production of this tourist experience. Furthermore, I propose that tourism research can enliven the conceptualization of genealogy. Genealogy is not just about past histories of relatedness on a family tree, but rather a movement along a way of life that enables people to expand their participation in a lifeworld. As amateur genealogists expand their realms of performance and social networks, they unavoidably endow places with new meanings and materiality. Tourism geographers should thus continue exploring the place-making power of ancestral tourism.

Keywords:

• Amateur genealogist
• ancestral tourism
• ancestry
• family
• genealogy
• lifeworld
• personal heritage tourism
• roots journey

Introduction

Ancestral tourism describes "any visit which might be partly or wholly motivated by a need to connect or reconnect with an individual’s ancestral past" (Alexander et al., 2017,  p.546). In their work, Mehtiyeva and Prince (2020) reinforce the importance of amateur genealogy to the ancestral tourist experience, arguing that the deskwork of genealogy is what sets these tourists on journeys to find specific places, landmarks, and people relevant to their family heritage. It is through genealogy research that people imagine and discover their family past, which often sparks a desire to see traces of the past in the present and to explore further one’s genealogical identity by being where ancestors once were (McCain & Ray, 2003; Murdy et al., 2018; Prince, 2021). Higginbotham (2012) differentiates between tourists seeking roots and tourists tracing lineage. While tourists tracing lineage travel primarily to heritage centres and libraries to dig in archives, tourists seeking roots travel to places of ancestral significance to experience a tangible connection with the past. The roots-seeking tourists might comb through archives and speak to local genealogists once in a place of ancestral significance, but, as this review demonstrates, research on the motivations of ancestral tourists usually puts more weight on the experience of being where one’s ancestors once lived. The conceptualization of ancestral tourism adopted here is thus one where roots-seeking tourists travel due to their interest in tracing lineage, which they might do during their journey, though the principal motivation is to feel a tangible connection with ancestral places.

Whilst traveling to homecoming events, family gatherings and historical sites to discover a personal heritage is nothing new, ancestral tourism has gained added significance in the past decades as a social phenomenon. With the affordability of DNA testing, digital archiving, and platforms to create virtual family trees, it has become easy to trace one’s ancestral lineage and even find distant relatives. Amateur genealogy has surged in popularity in the past decades, going from historically being an elitist practice used to bolster one’s pedigree, to a democratic practice that encourages its adepts to find multiple horizontal connections with unknown relatives (Caron, 2006). Television programs taking common people and celebrities on quests to discover their ancestry now also bolster the imagination of people eager to travel to discover their unique past. From the supply-side of tourism, current trends in tourist product development and in destination branding for roots experiences attest to the popularity of using ancestry to attract visitors (Alexander et al., 2017). For instance, Scotland has developed a destination brand centred on an ancestral tourism product after having identified people of Scottish descent as an important market segment for its tourism (Bhandari, 2016). As a result, tourism researchers currently recognize the important of ancestral tourism for those who partake in it and for destination stakeholders using it strategically (Murdy et al., 2018).

With ever more people travelling to find their roots and trace their lineage, tourism researchers have studied a great diversity of cases involving the exploration of a family past and personal heritage (Mehtiyeva & Prince, 2020). In this review, I outline the progress that tourism researchers and other social scientists have made in conceptualizing the ancestral tourist experience and its role for the formation of a genealogical identity. I also reflect on the lack of research investigating the role of local genealogists, family members, and community-members in the co-production of this tourist experience. After identifying research gaps in the conceptualization of the performative character of ancestral tourism, I suggest that tourism geographers explore further the place-making power of ancestral tourism.

Survey of the field and current trends

In the early 2000s, geographers and anthropologists started seriously investigating the motivations and experience of individuals embarking on roots journeys to distant ancestral homelands (i.e. Basu, 2007, 2004; Nash, 2002). The work of anthropologist Paul Basu (2007, 2005, 2004) on tourists of Scottish descent seeking their roots and doing genealogy research in rural Scotland stands as pioneering work in the field. These tourists visit places where their ancestors originally came from to learn about a personal heritage (McCain & Ray, 2003). Researchers often conceptualize the search for ancestry as a longing to reconnect with a tangible past, which sends amateur genealogists on journeys to ancestral homelands where they seek to find a place of belonging (Meethan, 2004; Mehtiyeva & Prince, 2020). These are highly affective journeys for ancestral tourists, who, once there, can connect their memories to the stories, places, landmarks, and objects of the past (Carter, 2019). The past becomes real in those instances, which makes its materiality a crucial element of the experience of being there in person (Basu 2004; Leite, 2005). In the context of Scotland, Bhandari (2016) and Murdy et al. (2018) identified that roots journeys can reinforce feelings of belonging to an ancestral home and even sentiments of nationalism. As such, visits to an ancestral homeland serve to explore an ethnic identity. Besides Scotland, researchers have also notably studied ancestral tourism in the context of Ireland (Hughes & Allen, 2010; Wright, 2009), China (Zhu, 2023) and Sweden (Mehtiyeva & Prince, 2020).

Ancestral tourism shares conceptual developments with other forms of tourism related to a search for home and belonging, intergenerational diaspora travel, and personal heritage and memory tourism experiences (i.e. Carter, 2019; Doornbos et al., 2023; Leite, 2005). Researchers specifically looking at ancestral tourism have taken a sociological approach to demonstrate the link between ancestral tourism and the desire to form a stable genealogical identity in a context of post-modern anxiety and ontological instability, where the hypermobility of people and capital destabilizes what were once stable understandings of the self and its existence in the world (Higginbotham, 2012; Prince, 2021). In this context, individuals of families uprooted by migration might not feel fully rooted in their land of adoption. Seeking roots through amateur genealogy and ancestral tourism thus becomes a way to find a place of belonging onto which to write one’s identity in a world of uncertainty (Basu, 2005; Nash, 2002). As such, genealogy research is part of the modern-day project of creating a coherent and socially desirable self (Higginbotham, 2012; Prince, 2021). As geographer Catherine Nash (2002) evoked in her research on the Irish diaspora, knowing your genealogy is about knowing who you are by knowing where you come from, which implies a desire to belong to a wider ethnic group, while still being able to present oneself as an individual with a unique genealogical lineage in a multicultural society.

Presenting a coherent genealogical self relies on filling narrative gaps in family stories and making sense of actions and decisions taken in the past by ancestors. This means that the presentation of a genealogical self will rely just as much on myths and the imagination as it will on objective facts and historical accuracy (Nash, 2002). Moreover, myths and imagination influence what ancestral tourists decide to visit in their ancestral homeland and how they make sense of the sites, objects, and people they encounter (Prince, 2021). It will also influence how destination stakeholders can present the past to provide ancestral tourists with the experience they seek (Alexander et al., 2017; Bryce et al., 2017). Little research explores the supply-side of this form of tourism compared to its demand-side. However, there are notable studies exploring the role of heritage stakeholders in the production of ancestral tourist experience. After interviewing curators, archivists and volunteers in Scotland, Bryce et al. (2017) identified an interplay between the professionally endorsed validation of the empirical veracity of objects, documents, and places and deeply held beliefs about an authentic Scottish homeland. As images and myths of the ancestral homeland developed in the diaspora permeate the roots journeys, heritage professionals find themselves participating in the co-creation of this tourist experience by confirming and enriching, but also skilfully disproving, ancestral narratives.

Local genealogists, archivists, and curators play a significant role in co-producing the ancestral tourist experience. Mehtiyeva and Prince (2020) observed that ancestral tourists to Sweden relied heavily on the help of local genealogists to find specific family sites and people of interest during their ancestral journeys. Sometimes, local genealogists went out of their way to bring tourists to sites of family relevance and to contact people in the parish whom they found out that the tourists were related to. Similarly, to what Bryce et al. (2017) observed in Scotland, these encounters with local genealogists enhanced the ancestral tourist experience to Sweden, and this beyond the mere provision of genealogical information. Considering this powerful dynamic, Murdy et al. (2018) propose that heritage destinations would enhance their attractiveness if they focused on key attractions that cater to personalized ancestral tourist experiences, such as genealogy centres, cemeteries, and historic churches.

With the popularity of ancestral tourism has come the trend of local genealogists directing their efforts to cater specifically to ancestral tourists by turning into business stakeholders of the tourist system. Besides providing genealogical services to their international clients, these enterprises sometimes even help with travel arrangements to the country and the places where ancestors came from. This trend currently remains mostly unexplored in tourism research. Moreover, in terms of facilitating the ancestral tourist experience, Kennedy-Eden and Gretzel (2021) outline that mobile devices and applications are extremely popular for finding information and making travel plans amongst tourists searching ancestral connections and sites. These technologies enable their users to form networks where they can share information and learn from each other. These two trends add a layer of complexity to the study of the co-production of the ancestral tourist experience.

Gaps and future directions

Genealogy is a central aspect of the ancestral tourist experience, which differentiates this form of tourism from other roots-related tourist experiences. As such, it is impossible to research ancestral tourism without having a strong conceptualization of genealogy. Early research on the ancestral tourist experience mostly presented genealogy as a canvas onto which individuals seeking a coherent and desirable identity painted their family stories and ethnicities. This conceptualization mostly left unaddressed the productive power of genealogy to shape people’s experience of the world around them. Regarding genealogy, anthropologist Tim Ingold (2011) made the compelling argument that we should conceptualize ancestry and its succeeding generations as forming fields of relationships, rather than representing past histories of relatedness with fixed positions on a family tree. Ingold (2011), as an anthropologist, presented this argument to defend Indigenous claims to land and indigeneity from Western conceptions of ancestral lineage. His conceptualization of genealogy is interesting in the context of ancestral tourism. It implies that genealogy is not merely the business of tracing a vertical lineage on a family tree; it is the activity of making oneself at home in the world by finding meaningful relationships in the present to nurture for the future. I propose that adopting such a conceptualization of genealogy in tourism geography would give research on ancestral tourism more analytical depth.

Following Ingold (2011), I argue that research in ancestral tourism should investigate the life histories of people who make their past meaningful in the present by going on roots journeys. Ancestral tourism shapes people in the present as, through it, they can participate in the formation of an ancestral lifeworld. As a philosophical concept, the lifeworld relates to the physical surroundings and the everyday experiences that make up one’s world. Ancestral tourists use their ancestry to navigate their physical and social surroundings in the present, not just to learn facts about the past such as family names and historical dates. In this regard, Prince (2022) outlined the importance of being at sites of everyday life for ancestral tourists journeying in their ancestral homeland. The desire to integrate the modern-day society of the ancestral homeland and to participate in its events, by, for instance, meeting new people and staying in touch with them, soaking up the atmosphere at parks and malls, and discovering places off the tourist-path, are significant aspects of the ancestral tourist experience.

Most research in ancestral tourism has focused on the meaning of the journey to an ancestral homeland. There remains room in tourism geography to explore the new meanings this form of tourism gives to places, communities, and landscapes. As people engage in a lifeworld, they unavoidably shape its outcome (Ingold, 2011). Using the case of a heritage festival in a Scottish community, Rodgers (2020) argues that ancestral tourists engage in practices of heritage-making by interacting with local community-members and as such create local heritage value for the community. Prince (2022) and Mehtiyeva and Prince (2020) observe that ancestral tourists give new meanings to rural areas by endowing them with stories of personal heritage and by forging new social relation during visits there. As ancestral tourism is a form of personal heritage tourism, tourism geographers would do well to engage with heritage studies and its theories of ‘doing heritage’ and ‘heritage work’ when investigating ancestral tourism as a place-making phenomenon. Studying how ancestral tourists perform their personal heritage would enable tourism geographers to go beyond discourses of mythical places and stories of emotional encounters. Such a focus would reveal how places form through the practices of actors involved in the activation of memory and identity work. These actors include ancestral tourists and their family members and relatives, community-members, and local genealogists and heritage practitioners.

As ancestral tourism grows in popularity, encounters between local genealogists and ancestral tourists will intensify. There is a significant research gap when it comes to the experiences and place-making practices of the stakeholders making up the supply-side of ancestral tourism. More research could investigate the labours and performances of genealogists who encounter ancestral tourists seeking the same tangible experiences and emotions they know that other ancestral tourists have had while travelling in the ancestral homeland. Most genealogists are not traditional tourism stakeholders per say, meaning that they do not intentionally partake in the production of experiences, products and services directed at tourists. These individuals can nonetheless find themselves answering to tourists needs that go beyond finding a missing ancestor on a family tree; these clients seek directions to real places and real people to contact (Mehtiyeva & Prince, 2020). As mentioned earlier, genealogists are seeing business opportunities in the popularity of ancestral tourism. It thus becomes relevant to ask what new place meanings, social relations and tourism development strategies will come from the actions and interactions of these new tourism stakeholders.

Sociological theories of identity-building and impression management will be useful to investigate further ancestral tourism as a modern-day social phenomenon. Amateur genealogists operate in the context of discourses that tells them what stereotypical images they should except to see in their ancestral homeland (Bryce et al., 2017). Moreover, this context also dictates what to expect during the ancestral tourist experience in terms of being able to find personal heritage sites, filling gaps in the family history and meeting newly discovered relatives (Prince, 2021). In this regard, Prince (2021) argues that authenticity in the ancestral tourist experience derives from performative narration. Exploring the Swedish context, she observed that amateur genealogists could easily present themselves as having Swedish origins and being part of Swedish families once they had travelled to their ancestral homeland. Just by being in Sweden and getting to know the place and its people, these ancestral tourists could find the substance they needed to perform the narration of the genealogical identity they longed for, regardless of what misfortunes they encountered during their journey. As social identities form through the narration of the self, narrative research will be essential to further the conceptual development of ancestral tourism, its connection to the formation of a genealogical identity, and the experience of authenticity.

While research on ancestral tourism has focused on individuals discovering a national genealogical identity (i.e. Scottish, Irish, Swedish), discovering ancestry within a birth country is also salient to the conceptualization of ancestral tourism. The notion of finding a distant ‘home’ or a ‘homeland’ might be misleading since ancestral tourists can also be domestic tourists. For instance, people of multicultural societies travel to places where their ancestors have landed and lived or to towns that their ancestors have helped establish in the new homeland. While tourism research has shed light on roots journeys to slave castles in Ghana (i.e. Carter, 2019), Foster (2023) reminds us that Americans of African descent also travel domestically to learn about their ancestors and feel a connection with their past. Besides countries, there are regions, towns, and villages developing tourism products, images and strategies based on ancestry, such as Kamouraska in the province of Québec, Canada. A focus on small places of ancestral tourist experience co-production would open the study of ancestral tourism to a broader spectrum of activities and narratives, including domestic tourism and the pursuit of leisure. Tourism statistics and even research often neglect the impacts of domestic tourism although it is an important market for destinations around the world. With more focus on small ancestral tourism destinations, the place-making power of ancestral tourism might turn out to have a much broader and complex reach than what current research shows.

Early research in the geography and anthropology of roots journeys was critical towards the artificial creation of memberships within delimited ethnic or family groups (Nash, 2002). Though amateur genealogy is no longer the elitist practice it once was (Caron, 2006), questions of contested heritage and nation-building remain salient to future research in ancestral tourism. As Zhu (2023) observed in the context of China, homecoming events can be part of political agendas of authenticating a sanitized imagined past by presenting specific itineraries and narratives to participants. At the domestic level, Foster (2023) criticizes dominant heritage discourses of the American heritage tourism industry, arguing that it displays very few stories crafted by people of families with African ancestry. Instead, the American heritage tourism industry commonly uses narratives of slavery and hardships, which overlooks the heroic narratives that people with African descent have written about their ancestors to establish a positive self-identity. It is thus relevant to continue asking critical questions about ancestral tourism and the popularity of genealogy research and about the heritage narratives that these activities (re)produce. When is the celebration of making horizontal connections with distant relatives de-politicizing issues related to cultural identity in contested heritage places? Or when is genealogy used to celebrate cultural identity in problematic ways by establishing who belongs and not to a group? To be critical, tourism geography needs a diversity of cases from around the world establishing the relationships, be they positive or negative, that people and groups foster in the present through their interest in travel and ancestry.

Conclusion

Ancestral tourism has become a popular activity for those interested in tracing their family lineage and experiencing affective connections with a tangible personal past. Nowadays, technologies such as mobile applications, digital archive deposits and online platforms for making virtual family trees facilitate the ancestral tourist experience. Ancestral tourism is also growing as a niche form of tourism at the destination-level with communities, regions and national destination management organizations alike seeking to attract tourists with relevant descendance through homecoming events and branding strategies. Research on the activities of heritage practitioners and local genealogists has outlined the important of these actors in the co-production of the ancestral tourist experience. However, while researchers have studied extensively the motivations and experiences of ancestral tourists, there is still room to study the performative and narrative work that these individuals put into making their ancestral tourist experiences meaningful. Diverse actors co-produce the ancestral tourist experience, including actors mostly disregarded in tourism research, meaning the family (i.e. family members and relatives) and tourism stakeholders such as community-members and genealogists. While tourism geographers should take seriously the conceptualization of genealogy in ancestral tourism research, tourism research can enliven the conceptualization of genealogy. Genealogy is not just a set of meanings handed down from generation to generation, but rather a movement along a way of life that enables people to expand their participation in a lifeworld. Ancestral tourism is a locus of self-organizing activities that brings the past into a meaningful present for those who seek an ancestral experience. As amateur genealogists expand their realms of performance and social networks, they unavoidably endow places with new meanings and materiality. Tourism geographers should thus continue exploring the place-making power of ancestral tourism.

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Additional information

Notes on contributors

Solène Prince

Solène Prince is Senior Lecturer in tourism studies in the School of Business and Economics at Linnaeus University (Kalmar, Sweden) and Associate Editor for Tourism Geographies.