Third Culture Adults in Global Transition

Response to Iyabo on Barack Obama

Iyabo, thank you for wonderful contribution, and most especially for your willingness to share with us your multi-dimensional background, as it relates to this discussion.

I agree with you that public figures and celebrities like Barack Obama, Tiger Woods and the new Miss USA, Rachel Renee Smith are helping to bring to the forefront of the media an increased awareness of third culture kids, and more specifically, the benefits and challenges of being biracial and/or bi-cultural TCKs. I loved it when my friend, Barbara Schaetti, recently exclaimed, "I get a kick out of this TCK/biracial/multinationally-influenced presence on the American stage!"   

And yes, I agree that "with our increasing easy access to information, travel and knowledge, most people are having third culture experiences on some scale." Ruth Van Reken and I write about this in our article, Third Culture Kids: Prototypes for Understanding Other Cross-Cultural Kids.

In my next post, I plan to open a discussion on the special issues for minority and biracial/multiracial TCAs/TCKs. I believe that it will be through discussions like this that we will better be able to increase our understandings about our similarities and differences in a way that is similar to your parents' outlook.

TCA's and Dual Expat Careers

Last week, I spoke to a former expat whom had lived in several countries over the span of his career. We engaged in a very lively conversation about my Third Culture Adult concepts. At one point during our discussion, the topic moved from one of great adventures, identity impacts, challenges and benefits of their children (TCKs) to the challenges experienced by his wife during his career, that were related to her promoting her own career and interests.

He is now retired. During their expatriate career and lifestyle, there were few resources  available to assist his spouse with finding creative alternatives for this dilemma. Has this been your experience? If so, how did you manage dual careers? Were you successful? Any great suggestions for our readers?

If you are an expat and looking for some great books to read on this topic, especially on portable entrepreneurship and book publishing, head on over to my friend, Jo Parfitt's website . This website contains articles, newsletters, and a cornucopia of books on expatriate living and offers cookbooks as well!! Jo has met and confronted the challenges of being accompanying spouse and has dedicated herself to helping other spouses be able to do the same.

Nostalgic "Maiden Voyage" Excursions

As I write this, I am on an Amtrak train traveling to New Orleans to do some post Katrina volunteer consulting work for the City of New Orleans. Although this is my first time on a domestic train, I immediately noted an almost instantaneous and nostalgic recall of experiences of traveling by train while living and traveling abroad.  It’s kind of funny, how that works. Apparently, I am still compelled by this notion. Even more interesting is my recognition that my initial experiences of being having been a passenger on trains were in Asia and Europe, long before my first experience in my home culture. I must admit that even though I am moving across the beautiful and varied terrain of the southern United States, it does not have the same flair or appeal experienced during my travels in other cultures. What is it that makes being on a train traveling through the countryside of foreign locales seem so exotic, alluring adventurous… even romantic? Perhaps in the early days of travel in the U.S., our ancestral sojourners experienced similar feelings of adventure romance, excitement as they journeyed east and west in search of fame, fortune and novel life-experiences.

The Third Culture Experience

What does it mean for you to have grown up in a mostly homogenous or monocultural community, and then to have found yourself suddenly immersed in an internationally mobile lifestyle?

Anthropologist, Dr. Ruth Useem first coined “third culture” in the 1950s while doing research, along with her husband, John Useem on an expatriate community in India. The used this generic term to cover the “interstitial” cross-cultural styles of life created, shared, and learned by persons who are in the process of relating their societies, or sections thereof, to each other. The 'third culture' is interwoven with the home culture or 'first culture', which is interwoven with the experience in the host or 'second' culture. Dr. Useem also brought her three sons along on this assignment and also began to observe the impacts to the children living in this interstitial lifestyle, and by extrapolation, they began to refer to the children of the expatriates that they were researching “third culture kids.

One of the distinctions that has been made concerning the impact of this lifestyle that has been made for children who have accompanied their parents on overseas assignment is the significance of having these experiences during their developmental years and the subsequent impacts to identity development, amongst a myriad of other gifts and challenges.

Readjustment to Home Culture

What was your experience of returning home from your overseas assignment? Craig Storti, the author of The Art of Coming Home states that returning to your home culture is often more difficult than going abroad in the first place. I wholeheartedly agree. Like many, I was aware that going abroad would be a different experience and in the course of this process I knew that I was a stranger in a foreign land. Coming home (that’s another discussion), especially the first time, was even more of a “culture shock, especially since I had not been prepared for what is generally referred to as “reverse culture shock.”

I vividly recall one of my early experiences of discovering the culture shock that often comes with reentry to one’s home culture. In 1987, after having completed my first overseas tour at Clark Air Force Base in the Republic of the Philippines, my family and I were staying in temporary family quarters at our new base of assignment. In the early evening following our arrival, we were quite startled by a strange and unfamiliar, repetitive sound. We began to search about the apartment trying to find this noise. Our nine-month old son looked bewildered and confused, as he attempted to follow our movements. I imagine that our reactions and behavior closely resembled characters from the 1960s TV show The Beverly Hillbillies or maybe even the characters from the hit sc-fi series Lost in Space.

My oldest son soon discovered that the sound was coming from the telephone. To our discovery, the once familiar ringing sounds of a telephone had been replaced by tones and pulses. This was only the beginning of transition through the readjustment to returning home. I would love to hear from others about their readjustment experiences after returning home from overseas assignments.