ABSTRACT
This chapter builds on ethnographic research among Danish-Palestinians and focuses on a diaspora tour to the Palestinian homeland. The key informants are young adults from families who had initially taken refuge in Lebanon and then fled to Denmark during the Lebanese Civil War. The diaspora tour is a ritualised homecoming and a response to the losses Palestinians have experienced since their dispossession and flight. It effectively (re)creates community and relationships with Palestine and its people and also involves a transformation not only of belongings but also of emotional states. One significant part of this change happens during visits to ancestral villages in today’s Israel. Another vital part is accumulating and purchasing ‘Palestinian objects’. After the tour, many of the travellers get involved in outreach work for Palestine and also engage in Danish public life more generally. They start to do voluntary work where they live and decide to become a part of Danish society through education and employment. As such, the tour becomes a rebirth of sorts. By taking seriously the transformative potential of diasporic practices, their meaningfulness and the complexities and ambivalences of belongings in the present world can better be understood.
