Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds

by David C. Pollock

  “Don’t worry, darling. You’ll be fine. I’m sure you’ll get a wonderful roommate. You’ve always made friends so easily. I know you’ll have no trouble at all,” her parents had reassured her as she faced that transition.

  But somehow it hadn’t been that easy. Fellow students would ask, “Where are you from?” at first, Erika automatically answered, “Singapore.” the universal reply was, “re-ally? You don’t look like it,” with the expectation of some explanation of how she was from Singapore.

  Soon, Erika decided she would be from New York—where her grandparents lived. She hoped that would simplify these complicated introductions.

  Eventually, as she adapted outwardly, picking up the current lingo and attire, others accepted her as one of them. By the end of her first year, however, she felt angry, confused, and depressed. How could anyone care so much about who won last week’s football game and so little about the political unrest and violence in Sudan or Tibet? Didn’t they know people actually died in wars? Perhaps they never read the global news that crawled across their TV screens while supposedly erudite “news” commentators went on endlessly about the latest celebrity scandal. They couldn’t comprehend her world; she couldn’t understand theirs.

  As time went on, Erika found a way to cope. Once she realized most of her peers simply couldn’t relate to what her life had been, she no longer discussed it. Her relatives were happy to tell everyone she was “doing fine.”

  Just before graduating from university, however, she lost the last internal vestige of home. Her father was transferred back to the states and her family settled in Dayton, Ohio. For school vacations, she no longer returned to singa-pore. Erika closed that chapter of her life. The pain of longing for the past was just too much.

  As she stared at the rhythmic, almost hypnotic, flashing red lights on the jet’s wings, Erika continued her reflections. That chapter on Singapore didn’t stay closed for very long. When did I reopen it? Why did I reopen it?

  After graduation, she had decided to get a master’s degree in history. Thinking about that now while flying somewhere over the Pacific Ocean, she wondered why she had chosen that particular field. Was I subconsciously trying to escape to a world that paralleled my own—a world that was once exciting but is now gone forever?

  Who could know? All Erika knew was that her restlessness increased in graduate school, and she finally dropped out. At that point, Erika decided only a return to Singapore would stop this chronic unsettledness, this sense of always looking for something that might be just around the corner but never was. But also, she couldn’t define what she wanted. Was it to belong somewhere? Anywhere?

  Although her family no longer lived in Singapore, she still had many Singaporean friends who had often invited her to stay with them. Why not live her own life overseas? Surely it would be far better to live in a place where she belonged than to wander forever in this inner limbo.

  Erika went online and booked a flight to Singapore. The next step was to call one of her former classmates still living in Singapore. “Dolores, I want to come home. Can you help me find a job? I’m coming as soon as I get my visa, and I’ll need a way to support myself once I’m back.”

  “That’s wonderful! I’m sure we can find some kind of job for you,” came the reply. “You can stay with me and my family until you get everything lined up.” Erika was ecstatic! it felt so familiar, so normal to be planning a trip overseas again. She couldn’t wait to return to the world in which she so obviously belonged.

  When she arrived in Singapore, her dream seemed to have come true. What airport in the world could compare to the beauty of Changi? Graceful banners hung on the walls, welcoming weary travelers in their own languages. Brilliantly colored flowers cascaded down the sides of the built-in garden beds throughout the terminals. Trees grew beside waterfalls that tumbled over rocks to a pond below. The piped-in sounds of chirping birds completed her sense of entering a garden in paradise. How could anyone not love this place?

  As she walked out of the terminal, she took a deep breath. How wonderfully familiar were the smells: tropical flowers and leaded petrol fumes—what a paradox! Living, life-giving plants and dead, polluting, fuel—intermingled. Was it possible her whole life was a paradox? A life full of rich experiences in totally diverse cultures and places, each experience filled with a special vibrancy that made her want to dance and celebrate the joy of life. And yet, a life in which she always felt a bit like an observer, playing the part for the current scene, but forever watching to see how she was doing.

  Erika quickly brushed these thoughts aside. Those times of being an outsider were gone now because she knew where she belonged—in Singapore. How wonderful finally to be home!

  As the days progressed, however, life seemed less familiar. She discovered that many things she had taken for granted as a child in the expatriate business community of Singapore were no longer hers to enjoy as a young, single, foreign woman living with a Singaporean family. No maid, no expensive restaurants, no car, fewer friends. Instead, she had to wash her clothes by hand, grab cheap rice dishes from street vendors, and get around the city by walking blocks in the hot sun to take a crowded bus.

  While growing up, her family might not have been classified as wealthy, but there had always been enough money for them to be comfortable and not worry about paying the bills, to take little side trips or splurge on a particularly nice outfit. Now she had to consider seriously such mundane questions as how much lunch cost and how she could pay for her barest living expenses.

  Finding a job was harder than she had imagined it would be. Jobs that paid enough for her to rent a reasonably modest apartment and buy food and clothes had to be contracted with international companies before entering the country. Now she realized that was what her father had done. To make matters worse, she learned that available jobs were next to impossible for a noncitizen to get. Because the government wanted to save jobs for Singaporeans, it rarely issued a work permit for local jobs to a foreigner. Besides, the jobs for local hires that she could find would not pay enough for her to live safely, let alone well. Because a young white woman was so obvious in a cheaper rent district with higher crime rates, Erika feared she would present a far too easy target for someone bent on robbery or assault.

  Here, in the world she had always thought of as home, Erika realized she was seen as a foreigner—an outsider. There was no such thing as an international passport.

  The sad day came when she finally had to admit that she didn’t fit in this country either. Sitting in her friend’s tiny apartment in a world she had thought was home, despair swept over her. She was lost. The promises of big dreams seemed foolish and childish. She belonged nowhere. With a muffled sob she picked up her cell phone and called her parents.

  “Mom, I can’t make it here, but I don’t know what to do. I don’t fit in Dayton, but I don’t fit here either. Somehow I seem to have grown up between two totally different worlds, and now I’ve found out I don’t belong to either one.”

  With infinite sorrow this time, she made one last airline reservation, and now she was here, 40,000 feet in the air, going—home?

  Erika’s story is only one of thousands we have heard from TCKs all over the world. The particulars of each tale are different, yet in a sense so many are the same. They are the stories of lives filled with rich diversity but conflicted by the underlying question of where they really fit in. What are some of the reasons for this common thread among TCKs? Who, indeed, are these TCKs and what are some of the benefits and challenges inherent in the experience they have had? How does this relate to those who have grown up among various cultures for many reasons besides moving physically or internationally? These are the questions we will address in the chapters that follow.

  CHAPTER 2

  Who Are “Third Culture Kids”?

  WHO OR WHAT EXACTLY IS A THIRD CULTURE KID? Coauthor David Pollock developed the following definition:

  A third culture kid (TCK) is
a person who has spent a significant part of his or her developmental years outside the parents’ culture. The TCK frequently builds relationships to all of the cultures, while not having full ownership in any. Although elements from each culture may be assimilated into the TCK’s life experience, the sense of belonging is in relationship to others of similar background.1

  Let’s look at this definition in detail.

  “A Third Culture Kid (TCK) . . . “

  Some of the most vigorous discussions about TCKs start with a debate over the term itself. People often ask, “How can you possibly say people with such incredibly diverse cultural backgrounds and experience can make up a “culture,” when the word culture, by definition, means a group of people who have something in common?”

  This is one of the strange paradoxes about TCKs. Looking at the differences among them—of race, nationality, sponsoring organizations, and places where they are growing (or have grown) up—you would think TCKs could have little in common. But if you have attended a conference sponsored by Global Nomads International2 or Families in Global Transition3 and have watched the animated, nonstop conversation of the participants throughout the weekend, you wouldn’t question the powerful connection between them. Norma McCaig, founder of Global Nomads, called it a “reunion of strangers.” What is this almost magical bond? Why have they been called third culture kids?

  THE THIRD CULTURE AS ORIGINALLY DEFINED

  A common misconception about third culture kids is that they have been raised in what is often called the “Third World.” While this might be true for some TCKs, the Third World has no specific relationship to the concept of the third culture. TCKs have grown up everywhere, including such places as Abu Dhabi, Accra, Amsterdam, Bangkok, Caracas, Kunming, London, New York, Singapore, Sydney, Timbuktu, and Vienna. Where, then, did this term develop? Two social scientists, Ruth Hill Useem and John Useem, coined the phrase third culture in the 1950s when they went to India for a year to study Americans who lived and worked there as foreign service officers, missionaries, technical aid workers, businesspeople, educators, and media representatives.4 While in India, the Useems also met expatriates from other countries and soon discovered that “each of these subcultures [communities of expatriates] generated by colonial administrators, missionaries, businessmen, and military personnel—had its own peculiarities, slightly different origins, distinctive styles and stratification systems, but all were closely interlocked.”5 They realized the expatriates had formed a lifestyle that was different from either their home or their host culture, but it was one they shared in that setting.

  To best describe this expatriate world, the Useems defined the home culture from which the adults came as the first culture. They called the host culture where the family lived (in that case, India) the second culture. They then identified the shared lifestyle of the expatriate community as an interstitial culture or “culture between cultures” and named it the third culture. Figure 2-1 illustrates this concept

  Figure 2-1 The Third Culture model

  (© 1996 Ruth E. Van Reken)

  As time went on, Dr. John Useem continued to focus on how the expatriate adults interacted with those from the local culture, while Dr. Ruth Hill Useem became fascinated with common characteristics she noticed among those growing up in this third culture. She called the children raised in that interstitial culture third culture kids (TCKs). Although Ruth Useem defined TCKs simply as “Children who accompany their parents into another society,”6 the TCKs she initially studied had all traveled overseas with parents working in international careers. The model in Figure 2-2 represents the traditional expatriate groups from which the TCKs came during those early days of her studies.

  It’s important to remember that the Useems’ research wasn’t in one expatriate subculture or “sector,” such as corporate or military, but included them all. Because of that, as Dr. Ruth Useem studied TCKs of all backgrounds and did not isolate them into sector-specific groups, she was able to see the common threads that linked them. At that time, most were also in what she called representational roles; these TCKs were seen as “little ambassadors,” “little missionaries,” or “little soldiers.” People around them (including parents) expected the children’s behavior to be consistent with the goals and values of the organizational system for which the parents worked. If it wasn’t, the children could jeopardize a parent’s career. Dr. Useem felt this reality was part of what made the TCK experience distinctive from other ways children might grow up cross-culturally, such as children of immigrants or bicultural parents.7

  Figure 2-2 The Third Culture Kid Model

  (© 1996 Ruth E. Van Reken)

  THE THIRD CULTURE AS CURRENTLY DEFINED

  The world has changed dramatically since the days when the Useems first defined the TCK term. Communities all over the world are becoming more culturally mixed. Many TCKs choose to blend into the world around them. They, and others, no longer believe it is their duty to represent a parent’s company, country, or organization as children of the past might have done. On the other hand, some TCKs in the military, foreign service, or mission sectors may still feel pressure to meet various social or behavioral expectations of the organizational system.

  When the Useems did their research, most Western expatriates lived in specific communal systems such as military bases, missionary compounds, or business enclaves. Identifying a visible, local expatriate community was relatively easy. Although there remain army bases and missionary and diplomatic compounds around the world, many expatriates no longer live in such physically defined communities. Many non-Westerners now live “abroad.” For example, the Japanese families who live in Kokomo, Indiana, and work for a large multinational corporation don’t live in a compound but throughout neighborhoods in that city. While their children may attend “Japanese school” on Saturdays, most of them attend local rather than international schools during the school year. Few, if any, go off to boarding schools as TCKs often used to do.

  Because there are frequently no well-marked expatriate enclaves anymore, some argue that the terms third culture and third culture kid are now misnomers. How can there be a culture if people don’t live together? Based on traditional understandings of culture as something people experience communally, how can we say that people from all these different races, cultures, creeds, ethnicities, or nationalities can actually share enough to be considered a “culture”? Is it still a valid term when the world has changed so much from the days in which it was first introduced?

  When we asked Dr. Ruth Hill Useem what she thought about this, she said, “Because I am a sociologist/anthropologist I think no concept is ever locked up permanently . . . . Concepts change as we get to know more; other times concepts change because what happens in the world is changing.”8

  In her survey of adult TCKs, Dr. Useem herself defined the third culture as a generic term to discuss the lifestyle “created, shared, and learned” by those who are from one culture and in the process of relating to another one. These larger definitions are justifiable because if culture in its broadest sense is a way of life shared with others, there’s no question that, in spite of their differences, TCKs of all stripes and persuasions from countless countries share remarkably important and similar life experiences through the very process of living in, and among, different cultures—whether or not they grew up in a specific local expatriate community. Further, the kinds of experiences they share tend to affect the deeper rather than more superficial parts of their personal or cultural being. Japanese researchers have developed their own terms for this experience: children of Japanese temporarily living as overseas residents are called kaigai-shijo and those who formerly lived overseas and have now returned to Japan are kikoku-shijo.9 (Appendix B talks about the Japanese research in this area.)

  In 2000, anthropology student Ximena Vidal wrote, “Third Culture Kids [are] an example of a people whose experience and cultural identity cannot be understood within the limiting [traditional]
frameworks of culture.”10 She goes on to say that TCKs are an example of a new way to define culture that is emerging in our post-modern world. Vidal claims that culture can be what we share experientially as well as the more traditional ways we have defined it.

  So what is it that all TCKs share simply because they have accompanied parents into other societies and grown up in a world outside the one that their passports would define as “home”?

  Like a double rainbow, two realities arch over the TCK experience that shape the formation of a TCK’s life:

  1.Being raised in a genuinely cross-cultural world.. Instead of simply watching, studying, or analyzing other cultures, TCKs actually live in different cultural worlds as they travel back and forth between their passport and host cultures. Some TCKs who have gone through multiple moves or whose parents are in an intercultural marriage have interacted closely with four or more cultures.

  2.Being raised in a highly mobile world.2. Mobility is normal in the third culture experience. Either the TCKs themselves, or those around them, are constantly coming or going. The people in their lives are always changing and the backdrop of physical surroundings may often fluctuate as well.