**3. Method**

The findings of this research are based on semi-structured interviews collected with 21 homeland tourists in Galicia. Participants interviewed were those that self-identified as being of Galician descent (either born in Spain or the US), living in the US permanently, and making return trips back to Galicia. Research was conducted in the areas of Sada and Bergondo, two small adjoining counties in Galicia's Coruña region with a historical impact of emigration to the US. It is often stated by community members that it would be di fficult to find a family in the area that has not been impacted by emigration to the US. Since the community is relatively rural, participants were recruited mostly through word of mouth fairly quickly. However, as a Galician-American that visits yearly and with family in this area, I already had a wide network to pass on information about the research and requests for interview participants. Having an understanding of the culture of this area also proved important for this research in acknowledging the intricacies of how these Galician-Americans construct a national identity. The mean age of the interviewees was 61, with ages ranging from 18 to 85. There were 6 males and 15 females interviewed. This research also conducted interviews of multiple "generations" within the same family, demonstrating the movement of Galician identity through a family. However, in doing so, this research acknowledges the di fficulty in separating these participants into cohorts by generations.

Through the assimilationist 'melting pot' approach to immigration, migrants were thought to have arrived in the new host country and stay, making grouping into generations for analysis fairly straightforward. The first generation were those who arrived in the new host country, their children would then make up the second generation, and so on. However, this approach is contrary to the reality of the diverse migrant experiences. It ignores important di fferences in opportunities and language acquisition of those that migrate at di fferent ages along with ignoring the reality of vastly di fferent historical experiences regardless of age, distinct class determinants, inter marriages between generations, and multi-direction and even multiple return migrations (Eckstein 2002). The Galician migrants from the areas studied in this paper would often migrate to other countries, such as Cuba, before reaching the US. Additionally, families were often separated and would migrate at di fferent times, with some members returning and moving back and forth between Galicia and the US (Pérez 2008). If transnationalism argues that the nation now exists beyond borders and migrants create transnational social fields that connect migrants and their host countries, then the traditional generation grouping does not account for the back-and-forth movement of people, ideas, and funds. Generations have therefore been conceived of by transnational scholars as existing on all sides of this transnational field, including those in the homeland (Fouron and Nina 2002).

The messy reality of migration makes it di fficult to determine distinct analytical categories for analysis. Someone born in Galicia but moved to the US before they could remember and did not visit throughout their childhood versus someone born in the US to Galician parents but spent every summer of their childhood in Galicia would occupy di fferent analytical groups from the traditionally conceived straight line assimilation categories of the first or second generation. In this research, analytical groups of generations sharing similarities of experience became increasingly di fficult to determine and participants themselves were often unsure of how to categorize themselves. Therefore, Table 1 shows the demographic information about each interview that identifies, instead of generations, their country of birth and age at which they immigrated to the US. This, however, still obscures the reality that participants often made multiple migrations either between Galician and the US or other destinations. Some were born in Spain outside of Galicia before they moved to the US. Some were born in the US and to mixed-generation parents and others spent large portions of their childhood in Galicia.


**Table 1.** Participant information by interview number, including age, gender, birthplace, and age immigrated to the US if applicable.

This research also acknowledges the di fficulty in determining how representative the sample is of Galician-Americans. There were expectedly a high number of retirees who visited annually due to having the time and disposable income to do so. However, data on the numbers of individuals who identify as Galicians in America is not collected. Looking at census data can give a number of how many registered Galician voters there are in the US (about 9000 from Coruña according to 2019 data from the Instituto Nacional de Estadística). However, many of the participants interviewed have either renounced their citizenship or never acquired it in the first place. As N úñez has stated, "It is almost impossible to tally the total amount of Galicians who live outside their mother country nowadays" ( N úñez 2002, p. 231). An e ffort was made to conduct phone interviews with younger Galician-Americans that could not a fford the trip the year that the interviews were conducted; however, only one interview materialized from this.

This specific research topic of immigrant identity brought up delicate themes, such as racism and intolerance, issues surrounding the turbulent political history of the area, recollections of poverty, and nostalgia for those left behind. Therefore, the research process took ethical steps by ensuring confidentiality of the data, requiring informed consent from all interviewees before participating in the research, receiving ethical approval through the University of Bristol, giving participants access to their data, providing participants with an in-depth project information sheet, making interviewees aware that they could withdraw from the research at any point, and utilizing a less structured approach to interviewing in order to allow the participant to guide the topic of the interview more than most semi-structured interviews.

The data were analyzed using a thematic analysis. Topics analyzed in this research were coded through ordering and analyzing with reoccurring broad general themes followed by more specific sub-themes. Overall, the research included themes, such as memories of Galicia and times spent there, experiences of being Spanish in America, and the visit itself (reasons for the visit, how they are received, changes to the homeland, downsides of the visit, and reinforcing identity). All coding and analysis were done using Nvivo 9.

This research acknowledges that participants' age, socio economic status, gender, and additional identifiers will influence the way that participants visit Galicia and engage in homeland tourism. While this is not the focus of this research, I acknowledge that all Galician-Americans are not one homogenous group and a few even belong to additional national and ethnic groups. The following discussion presents data on how, through homeland tourism, these participants imagine a Galician identity, not ignoring the diverse identities of the participants but rather the way a Galician identity is managed and layered alongside this diversity.
