When Hosts Become Guests: Return Visits and Diasporic Identities in a Commonwealth Eastern Caribbean Community

The broad intent of this paper is to further contribute to the existing literature that addresses VFR tourism. It suggests that the return visit may ultimately be positioned as a form or type of travel within the larger category of VFR tourism, but a form or type that has built within it a more clear understanding of historic and social contexts and processes. The other broad intent of the paper is to highlight the importance of the relationship between the returning visitor, originating from diasporic communities abroad, and the host community as a stage for the negotiation of identities. The return visit is shown to reflect such underlying processes yet continue to incorporate aspects of individual motivation, which when taken together demonstrate the fluidity of diasporic spaces and transnational identity structures. Using data obtained from ethnographic fieldwork among social networks within the Commonwealth Eastern Caribbean community in Toronto, Canada, it is suggested that return visits are used to retain social histories and contextualise social and cultural backgrounds after migration. The implications for VFR tourism and the relationship between diasporas, transnationalism and tourism are discussed, as is a conceptual model of the return visit.