Paper short abstract:

None

Paper long abstract:

Out-migration from Britain by British nationals is attracting increasing academic and popular interest. One idea to emerge suggests that British identity tends to be deconstructed into its constituent parts (English, Scottish and Welsh) through the process of migration and that the break-up of Britishness results in essential underlying identities (re)emerging rather than forms of hybridity developing. This paper recognises that we are always already hybrid and thus these constituent parts are hybrid forms themselves.

The mobility patterns of migrant British populations are, particularly in the case of Europe, prefigured by tourist mobilities. Drawing on experience working in the European travel industry the author outlines a substantive example of the osmotic exchange between tourism, travel and migration through a focus on elite cultural tourism, in particular walking tours. Tourism is understood as a membrane with the constituent(s) discovering appropriate solutions and the elements of identity that 'work'. These tensions are maintained in migration yet an individual's account of themselves may obscure the soluble nature of identity, the progression of hybridity. It is proposed that a focus on the internal and external decoration and representation of domestic space can act metaphorically as a filter through which such hybridity may be drawn.

E-paper: this Paper will not be presented, but read in advance and discussed

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