Family memory trips – children's and parents’ planning of adoption return trips

Abstract

ABSTRACT It can be argued that adoption return trips are a new travel industry. Today, transnational adoptive families make adoption return trips while their children are very young. The aim of such trips is to create positive links between the child and their birth country. Based on interviews with ten Swedish transnational adoptive families, this qualitative and interdisciplinary study sets out to explore how adopted children and their parents plan return trips. The analysis shows that both children and parents mobilise memories of places, people and heritage sites from the birth countries while planning their trips. In theoretical terms, the study draws on family tourism in combination with child studies and ‘personal memory tourism.’ The article challenges the idea that adoption return trips are exclusively for the benefit of the adoptee and suggests that the family planning of adoption return trips makes them into ‘family memory trips.’