The Voyage of the Self: Experiencing the subjective zone of international travel

Abstract

International travel not only generates large‐scale human movements across national boundaries, but also facilitates the construction of dynamic and meaningful experiences. This study explored international travel experience by determining, for a selected group of travellers from mainland China who visited the US in the summer of 2005, how the travellers’ identities were shaped by the practice of international travel and, at the same time, how their interpretations of the travel experience were shaped by the emerging identities. The study involved 18 semi‐structured interviews which revealed diverse selfperceptions among the travellers. The narratives of the travellers demonstrated that the overseas travel provided them with an opportunity to define and negotiate alternative identities in the course of interaction with the local community. The findings showed that travel clearly entailed an internal voyage in which the travellers were in the process of discovery of who they and others are. As demonstrated in their narratives, the interviewees mostly reflected on their identities as foreigners, travellers, Chinese nationals, and their experience of developing a renewed sense of self. These categories are clearly a simplification of the complex and multiple identities that each of the travellers might embrace, but they served as a starting point in exploring the diversity of voices revealed in this study. It also appeared that reflection on these forms of identity did not always imply enduring and profound changes to the psyche of the travellers, but rather facilitated a learning process in which they obtained new resources to understand themselves as well as others.