Third Culture Kids

These days many people spend some part of their working life in postings in another country - and I’ve heard that there are some companies that actually require their executives to work abroad if they are want to progress within the firm.  And if you yourself have not had the chance to work or live abroad, you probably know someone who has or is doing that right now.

This expatriate community is different from migrants in that migrants move permanently to start a new life in a new country while expatriates are in their new country for shorter periods and have the intention of moving back home one day. There are similarities in that both communities tend to stick close to their own - at least initially anyway. They also have to learn new customs and sometimes new languages. There is a nostalgia for the home country and the need to find food and nourishment from home.

Expatriates, though, can move from country to country depending on the requirements of their jobs. This can be exciting and also challenging. In particular, for the wives and families of the jobholder - and, yes, it does seem that the jobholder doing the country-hopping is often the man. For children especially adapting to a number of different cultures over the years can be hard.

Dr Ruth Hill Useem, an American sociologist, coined the term "Third Culture Kids" back in the 1960s to refer to such globetrotting children. She went to India with her husband to do research there and her children came along. She became interested in the impact of this change on her own children and this inspired her to a lifelong study of these social groups. Research papers have examined all aspects of this lifestyle and also tracked groups of children as they grew up. There are now good sources of data to look at the impact of expatriate life on the lives of adult Third Culture Kids (TCKs). Key findings include the following: TCKs are more likely to have bachelors degrees than their stay at home peers; they can have difficulty relating to their own ethnic groups and they retain a global dimension throughout their lives.

In many countries, there are international schools that cater for TKCs. Some offer Third Culture Kid programmes to help the parents and the children adjust to the expatriate issues - one example is Dulwich College in Beijing.

Since Dr Useem first developed her ideas in the 1960s, air travel and globalisation has made such global lifestyles almost commonplace. But the challenge to adjust successfully and thrive in diverse cultures remain - as it should: who would want to live a world where everything and everyone and every culture were the same no matter if you were in Fiji or New York or Iceland?

Useful links:

Third Culture Kids - http://www.tckworld.com   

Dulwich College, Beijing - http://www.dcbeijing.cn/

Are you an expatriate with Third Culture Kids? Or did you used to be a Third Culture Kid yourself?

I’d love to hear about your experiences. What was challenging? What was fun? What unusual customs made an impression on you - or your kids? Do you agree with Dr Usee’s findings? Or do you disagree?

Please leave a comment or email me.

pic from flickr by nattywoohoo; noncommercial; no derivations