Diaspora tourism and well-being over life-courses

This research reconceptualises the linkages between tourism and well-being by considering well-being as dynamic assemblages that exist dependent on performative impacts of place, age, time, and contextual events. Adopting a biographical approach, we examined life histories of 26 Chinese migrants, and explored how diasporic return shaped their subjective well-being over life-courses. Based on their own articulations of home return experiences, meanings, feelings, and life purposes, four patterns of how the effects of diaspora tourism change over life-courses were identified, depending on individual's early exposures to home place and culture, age of first and later return, change of life purposes and conceptions of well-being. The findings encourage further debates over temporal variability in possible linkages between tourism and subjective well-being. • We explore the dynamic effects of diaspora tourism on migrants' well-being. • This research reconceptualises well-being as dynamic entanglements. • Four scenarios demonstrate how effects of diasporic return transform over time. • Our findings encourage further debates over linkages between tourism and well-being.