Diaspora Community Festivals and Tourism

The enforced, encouraged or voluntary movement, migration and dispersion of people over centuries and in recent years is reflected in the family backgrounds, life histories and cultural practices of diaspora communities in many countries, regions and cities worldwide. In many cases, diaspora communities have been subject to hostility and discrimination in their adopted countries and some remain relatively impoverished, marginalised and excluded from mainstream society.

Diaspora Community Festivals and TourismOthers, in contrast have been more socially and economically successful and have either retained distinct diaspora community identities or have become more integrated with other communities over time. Tourism has also grown substantially if unevenly in recent years, with tourists increasingly encouraged to attend and participate in exotic and characteristically authentic displays of community life in the places that they visit. Such tourism typically features the packaging, promotion and consumption of diaspora community neighbourhoods, food and shopping and importantly festivals and cultural events.

Conference Themes
- Histories of diaspora communities mobilities and the transformation and adaptation of festivity and cultural events to new community circumstances and settings;
- Relationships between diaspora communities and the homeland and expressions of collective memory through festivals and cultural events;
- The distribution and circulation of globalised diaspora festival forms e.g. carnival, mela, Irish, Chinese, Jewish religious and secular, established, emerging and contested;
- The role of diaspora festivals and cultural events in policies and programmes to promote community cohesion, crime reduction and anti-racism;
- Festivals, cultural events and the identities of diaspora community members - inter-generational issues;
- Festivals, cultural events and the multi- (inter-) cultural city;
- Settings and spaces for diaspora festivals and cultural events;
- Issues surrounding new and recently introduced diaspora community festivals and cultural -events;
- Performing diaspora community arts through festivals;
- Diaspora tourism markets

More information: http://www.tourism-culture.com