ETHNIC PILGRIMAGES: PEOPLE OF LITHUANIAN DESCENT IN LITHUANIA

A fascinating element in ethnic identity construction and reconstruction processes is the role of homelands. Ethnic identity is dependent in part on whether homelands are constructed as a place or as an idea. This social construction is partially determined by when and how individuals or their ancestors emigrated. The experiences of Lithuanian American economic immigrants, political emigres, and their offspring are explored. For many European Americans (including Lithuanian Americans), traditional measures of ethnicity (such as language retention and endogamy) are not as important as contemporary constructed or invented symbols of ethnic identity (such as ethnic festivals and display of ethnic artifacts). I argue that trips or "ethnic pilgrimages" to the ancestral homelands have received relatively little attention in the ethnicity literature but are central mechanisms of ethnic reconstruction and renewal.