Going back to give back: Young diasporans and Ethiopian development

...Many of my respondents were somewhere along a personal journey exploring their ancestral connection to Ethiopia, and physical trips to Ethiopia were an important part of this process. Family vacations to Ethiopia as a child and other travels to the country were important as drivers of their future engagement in Ethiopian development. These trips helped give shape to what may have felt like an abstract or distant country to my respondents up until that point. They also facilitated interpersonal interactions and relationships with people living there, which exposed them to the social, political, and economic issues of the country through a subjective, three-dimensional lens. While these trips often involved pleasurable activities such as family gatherings, sightseeing, and trips to resorts, they were also punctuated by jarring encounters with child poverty, inequality, and evidence of poor governance. These made lasting impressions on my respondents, often shaping their imaginations of and future engagements with the country.