The search for a home
WHY “WHERE ARE YOU FROM?” IS SOMETIMES A MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTION
September 20, 2006
Amy Mochar
I will never forget the day I discovered I had a name. No, I don’t mean my given name; I mean the day I discovered there is a word for people like me. In that instant, my entire existence and my experiences leading up to that moment were suddenly affirmed as valid. For once, I belonged to something. I discovered I was a Third Culture Kid (TCK).
Consider, for a moment, your identity. What is your identity based on and, more specifically, what role does your physical environment play in your concept of identity? For a TCK this can be a difficult question to answer.
In their book, Third Culture Kids: The Experience of Growing Up Among Worlds, David Pollock and Ruth Van Reken define a TCK as “a person who has spent a significant part of his or her developmental years outside [their] parents’ culture. TCKs build relationships to all of the cultures, while not having full ownership in any.”
To clarify, the TCK is comprised of three cultures:the first culture is that of the parents’, the home culture, the second is the host culture, and the third is the international community formed amongst others of similar background and situation. Often TCKs form the quickest and deepest bonds with others of this “third culture,” those with similar stories of moving around the world.
However, from a young age TCKs learn to perform a delicate balancing act between these three worlds, which can sometimes cause immense tension and stress. A common difficulty is the division of loyalties between the “home culture” and the host culture(s). Because TCKs move for the first time as children or adolescents, their sense of self is not yet fully developed. Unlike their parents, they do not have a strong sense of patriotism or identity to their “home culture” and so their experience in a new country has a profound impact upon their development.
My parents are Canadian, yet I grew up in three other countries on two continents. Each time we moved, I learned to assimilate to the new culture to the point that I now adapt to people, accents, and behaviour automatically. Consequently, I am an eclectic mix of each place I have lived while not feeling like I am fully part of any. When it comes to telling someone who I am or where I come from, I have divided loyalties.
For many TCKs, “Where are you from?” is a most dreaded question; unavoidably it produces inner conflict. Many TCKs have a developed hierarchy of answers to this question depending on the level of trust they have in the person asking, or how much information they feel like divulging about their past. And for many, it is the question they are searching to answer for themselves.
To learn that my experience growing up in multiple countries was not unique and that there was a word to describe people of similar background was not so much a label as it was a freedom–freedom to accept that I will never quite belong to any one culture, but that I have a trove of multi-cultural experiences most people twice my age don’t have. While I certainly still struggle with the realities of my upbringing, I am also learning to appreciate its benefits. So the next time you meet someone who gives you a blank stare when you ask where they’re from, pause and consider all that their hesitation might entail.
Now you go...
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