What It Means to Go Back: Americans Returning to Ancestral Homelands in Europe

The Reverse Migration

There's a TikTok trend gaining momentum: Americans in their twenties and thirties posting videos from Italian apartments, Scottish flats, Irish terraces. The captions follow a pattern: "My great-grandparents left here in 1910" or "This is where my family lived before they emigrated." Some moved for work, some for school, some navigated the Italian bureaucratic system to claim citizenship by descent. What unites them is the same reason their great-grandparents departed a century ago; they are seeking something different.

Between 1880 and 1920, more than 4 million Italians emigrated to the United States. Most came from the south—Calabria, Campania, Sicily—fleeing conditions that made a transatlantic journey to a foreign country seem less risky than staying. Irish emigration was even more dramatic: during the Great Famine between 1845 and 1851, over 1.5 million people left Ireland, and by 1860, more than 4.5 million Irish had arrived in America. Scottish Highlanders were cleared from ancestral lands throughout the 1800s and scattered to industrial cities or sent overseas. English emigration happened more gradually over centuries but still produced millions of descendants who now live in the United States with only vague knowledge of where their families originated.

Their descendants—roughly 17 million Americans claim Italian ancestry, 32 million claim Irish, millions more Scottish and English—are now reversing the journey. But here's the surprising thing: most have never been back.

The Heritage That Lives in Kitchens and Stories, Not Passports

Walk through certain neighbourhoods in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco—Italian bakeries, Irish pubs, Scottish societies, English tea shops. Talk to people who work there and they'll tell you about grandparents who spoke the language, maintained the traditions, cooked the food exactly the way it was made in the village they left behind. They'll tell you they're Italian, Irish, Scottish. They identify with the culture deeply.

Then ask when they last visited. Or if they've ever been. And the answer is often never.

A YouGov study found that while 53% of Americans with Italian ancestry describe themselves as "Italian" or "Italian-American," many have never visited Italy, let alone the specific region their families came from. The heritage is real: it shapes how they cook, how they celebrate, what values they prioritise, but the actual place remains abstract. Southern Italy to them means the stories their grandmother told, not a specific town with a name they can find on a map.

The disconnect between feeling deeply connected to a place and never having experienced it is what drives ancestral travel when it finally happens. People aren't going as tourists. They're going because they want to understand what their family left behind, why they left, and what parts of that culture survived immigration and what parts were lost or transformed.

Ancestral Travel Planning: Where to Begin

The most common inquiry we receive about ancestral travel starts the same way: "My family came from Italy" or "My grandparents were Irish" or "We're Scottish, I think from somewhere in the Highlands." Then the pause. Then: "I don't really know where to start."

The problem isn't lack of interest. Americans interested in genealogy have access to more resources than any previous generation - DNA tests, digitized records, online forums, ancestry databases. Over 75% of Americans report being interested in genealogy, and more than 32 million have taken DNA tests. The information exists.

What's missing is the bridge between knowing "my great-grandfather came from Calabria in 1903" and actually standing in the village he left, understanding what his life was like there, finding the church where he was baptised. That bridge requires research, translation, navigation of bureaucratic systems, and often coordination with local historians or genealogists who can access records that aren't digitised and aren't available to tourists walking in off the street.

It also requires time Americans don't have. Plenty of people who identify strongly with Italian, Irish, or Scottish heritage often still work in industries that reflect that identity: tourism, craft, family owned businesses, cultural organisations. They're hardworking. They have two weeks of vacation if they're lucky. The idea of taking that limited time to fly to Europe, navigate a foreign country, and attempt genealogy research while managing language barriers and unfamiliar systems feels overwhelming. So the trip doesn't happen, or it gets postponed indefinitely, or they visit the country but stick to tourist destinations because they don't know how to access the village their family came from.

Heritage Travel to Ireland, Scotland, Italy, and England: What Makes Each Different

When ancestral travel succeeds, it creates a profound connection that is hard to describe but instantly recognisable to those who have experienced it. This connection can be felt when a person enters the church where their great-grandmother was baptised, reads family surnames on gravestones in a cemetery, or sits in a village square that was once familiar to their ancestors before emigration.

Ireland draws Americans whose families left during or after the Great Famine, which means emigration is relatively recent (150-170 years) and records are decent for the period. Irish genealogy is complicated by the fact that records were kept locally and inconsistently, and the 1922 fire at the Public Record Office in Dublin destroyed centuries of documents. What survived is scattered across parish churches, diocesan archives, and local libraries. Visiting Ireland for ancestral research means knowing which parish the family came from—county-level information isn't specific enough—and working with local historians who know which records exist and which were lost.

Scotland attracts Americans drawn to clan identity and Highland culture, but the history is more complicated than most realize. Highland Clearances in the 1800s forcibly removed entire communities from ancestral lands, scattering families to industrial cities or overseas. Tracing someone back to a specific glen or island requires knowing which clan they belonged to, which estate they lived on, and whether records survived the clearances. Scottish records are better preserved than Irish records because civil registration started earlier (1855), but clan histories often contradict official records, and sorting through competing narratives requires expertise.

Italy is the most common destination for Americans with southern Italian ancestry, but also the most logistically complex. Mass emigration happened between 1880 and 1920 from regions that were poor, rural, and had inconsistent record-keeping. Civil registration began in 1866 after Italian unification, but records before that are held by churches, and southern Italian churches weren't always diligent about maintaining them. Villages were small—sometimes only a few hundred people—and surnames repeat constantly, which makes genealogy research difficult without parish records that clearly distinguish between people with the same name.

Southern Italian villages were often depopulated after mass emigration and either absorbed into larger municipalities or abandoned entirely. Visiting requires knowing which comune (municipality) the village belongs to now, because borders changed after unification and again after both World Wars. It also requires navigating Italian bureaucracy, which functions differently than American systems and has its own logic that isn't immediately intuitive to outsiders.

England is less common as an ancestral destination because English emigration happened over centuries rather than in concentrated waves, and English heritage is often assumed rather than investigated. But for Americans researching Puritan ancestry, Quaker migration, or industrial-era emigration, England has extensive records, from parish registers starting in the 1500s, census data from 1841 onward, immigration manifests. The challenge isn't availability but accessibility. Records are stored in county archives that require advance notice, and older documents use styles of handwriting that take practice to read.

What We Do: Planning Ancestral Journeys

Peregrina organizes ancestral journeys for Americans seeking pre-arrival research, comprehensive logistics management during the trip, and an itinerary tailored to their specific family history instead of general heritage tourism.

We collaborate with local genealogists, historians, and archivists in Ireland, Scotland, Italy, and England to confirm the existence of records, access non-digitized documents, and offer context that transforms names on a family tree into real individuals who lived in particular locations during certain times. We organize translations as necessary, work with local guides who have an in-depth knowledge of the regions, and create itineraries that balance research time with other activities, ensuring the trip doesn't solely focus on archive visits.

Some clients want half their trip spent tracing family records. Others want one meaningful day visiting the ancestral village, then the rest of the trip experiencing the country as travellers. Both approaches work, and both require different preparation.

We also address the challenges that complicate ancestral travel when planned independently: dealing with bureaucratic systems that operate differently from American ones, coordinating with churches and town halls with restricted hours and appointment requirements, securing lodging in villages lacking hotels, and hiring drivers familiar with back roads not recognised by GPS.

If you're American, identify strongly with Italian, Irish, Scottish, or English heritage, and have been thinking about visiting but don't know where to start, get in touch. We'll figure out what's realistic, what requires more research, and whether the trip you're imagining can deliver the connection you're hoping for.