Lauren Bayne CAPS Blog #1

Third Culture Kids

A third culture kid, or global nomad, is a person that grew up in many different cultural contexts because his or her parents moved from their home country (Martin & Nakayama, 2009). The term is used because TCKs combine aspects of their birth culture and of the new culture in which they are immersed to create their own unique “third” culture. In this way, they develop a unique sense of identity that gives many of them the ability to understand and communicate easily with people from various cultures and backgrounds.

A friend of mine spent four years, ages eight through twelve, growing up in Bulgaria because her father was a missionary there. Her whole family relocated with him, including her mother, and older brother and sister. They lived in the capital, Sofia, where she attended a public school for a time, but later transferred to a U.S. Embassy school due to the poor public education. She became integrated in the culture of Sofia, even going so far as being friends with a son of the local Bulgarian mafia leader. She played soccer and baseball with the local “boys,” grew up calling her parents’ close Bulgarian friends “Uncles” and “Aunts,” and spoke both Bulgarian and English. Still today, six years after moving back to the United States, she refers to Sofia as home. The food, the sense of community, and even the dirty streets and rather provocative billboards on the streets of Bulgaria, integrated themselves with her white American identity, which transformed into her identity as a third culture kid. With this experience, my friend has acquired a passion for being involved internationally and has developed a resilience and understanding of cultures. But she has also acquired a feeling of being fragmented and marginalized. She has discovered that very few people understand, or want to understand, her experiences in Bulgaria. This leaves her discouraged, and now she does not mention Bulgaria in public unless she is asked about it.

Understanding part of the cultural identity of a third culture kid will greatly aid in any intercultural communication a person may have with one. This contact could prove to be one of the most unique intercultural communications a person can have because a TCK has a multicultural identity, something that many native-born, white Americans do not have. According to Dr. Ruth Useem, the sociologist who coined the term, third culture kids, “there is a high level of international activity in adult TCKs” (Cottrell, 1993). As I will likely work in an international setting in the future, having a basic understanding of one facet of a TCK’s identity will ease the process of intercultural communication and will open up the opportunity for me to learn more fully about his or her own unique cultural identity.

References:

Martin, J. N., & Nakayama, T. K. (2009). Intercultural Communication in Contexts. McGraw-Hill Higher Education.

Cottrell, Ann. (1993). ATCKs Have Problems Relating to Their Own Ethnic Groups. Retrieved from http://www.tckworld.com/useem/art4.html