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.

As an ATCK, we know exactly what our children are going through while growing up in a country that is not their (and our!) passport country. We have doubts about what language to teach them, as we are multilinguals, and we don’t know what kind of traditions we should teach them, show them and which aspects of our very colorful life we should pass them on.

As ATCK’s and former TCK’s (or expats-since-birth) we don’t feel the urge to have to explain where “home” is, we never questioned this. I’ve read so many articles from not-real-ATCK’s pretending that TCK’s ask themselves where they come from: this is simply not true!

I noticed that many topics about multilingualism, raising multilingual children etc. are often written by First Culture Adults or parents who never experienced a whole life as “expat” and I realize that the way to approach these topics is quite different from what I expect.

Therefore I would like to make this small attempt to ask other ATCK’s to let me know how they raise their TCK’s and what kind of experience they’ve made.

With your help, I will soon start this series on my blog because as an Expat-since-birth and ATCK myself, and raising TCK’s I’m wondering what makes the difference of being ATCK parents, raising TCK’s.

Related articles

• Being a Third Culture Kid: Big Fat Mindfuck or Blessing? (opineseason.com)
• Expat parenting book read-along (bxlsprout.com)
• Planning for Third Culture Kids (TCK’s) (asiasurvey2013.wordpress.com)
• My multilingual journey (expatsincebirth.com)

Maybe a Third Culture Kid (TCK)? TCK is a term coined in the early 1950s by the american sociologist and anthropologist Ruth Hill Useem “to refer to the children who accompany their parents into another society”. Based on this definition, are TCK children usually born in their parents homecountry? – The american sociologist David C. Pollock suggested another description for third culture kids: “A Third Culture Kid (TCK) is a person who has spent a significant part of his or her developmental years outside the parents’ culture.” It doesn’t say when such a kid did spend or started to spend life “outside the parents’ culture”, so it could be from birth? Was I a TCK before becoming an expat?

What about Global Nomads? In 1984, Norma McCaig coined the term Global Nomad as a synonym to TCK: “A global nomad is anyone of any nationality who has lived outside their parent’s country of origin (or their “passport country”) before adulthood because of a parent’s occupation”. She opted for this slightly different definition of TCK’s because she didn’t like being called a kid when she was grown up and she wanted to make clear for future research purposes that this experience happened because of a parent’s career choice. Those parents weren’t refugees or immigrants. McCaig did not want the nuances particular to each type of experience to be lost.

For this reason, Ruth Van Reken is now suggesting a more comprehensive term, Cross-Cultural Kid (CCK), for all types of cross-cultural childhoods. “A Cross-Cultural Kid (CCK) is a person who has lived in—or meaningfully interacted with—two or more cultural environments for a significant period of time during developmental years.“ – But these terms classify children again, not adults.

I would like to point out that one of the common characteristics of a TCK is “expected repatriation”. And if you are a CCK or TCK who never expected to repatriate?

Let’s see the next category: the Adult Third Culture Kid. – The Adult Third Culture Kid is the grown up (or adult) version of a child who has had the privilege of living for significant periods of time in non-native cultures. What exactly does “native cultures” mean? Is this the “homecountry” of the parents, well known to First Culture Persons? Or does it mean the country where you were actually born – and this could be an other one than your parents’ homecountry?

Instead of “non-native cultures” we can also find “in countries outside their birth or passport country/ies due to parental work-related migration” in this definition of ATCK. Are the “countries outside their birth” and “passport country/ies” supposed to be the same? And “for significant periods” always implies a longer stay, but not a lifelong stay, right? – How does this term differ from expat though?

You can also find the term Third Culture Adult. In her dissertation “Third-culture Students: an exploratory study of transition in the first year of College” (Appalachian State University, 2001), Dorothy S. Weigel refers to Third Culture Adults as “someone who grew up with the third-culture experience and is beyond the traditional college age” (Cottrell & Useem, 1993). In this way the term covers the post-college period in someones’ life.

I’m still missing a term that would sum up an expat, ex-TCK (or ATCK) – maybe global nomad? – who spent the whole life in other countries than the one of his or her passport.

I’m not a child anymore, so I might be an Third Culture Adult? I’m a German citizen, but never lived in Germany. I never only “accompained” my parents into another society, I was born into one. And I didn’t only spend “a significant part of my developmental years outside” of my parents’ culture, but all of my life up to now. And I’m in my forties…

I guess I passed from a TCK to an ATCK and I am now an expat–global nomad… or just an expat-since-birth (someone who lives out of her passport country since birth).

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Personally, I use the term of “Expat” in its original meaning from EX-PATRIAM (“out of” + “fatherland”) which, for people from romanic countries is much more logical. The term of “expatriate” comes from lat. EXPATRIATUS, which is the past participate of EXPATRIARE and means “bannished”. When telling an Italian or French etc. person that he or she is an “expatriate”, they would probably make the connection with people who have been banned from their home countries and refuse to be labelled this way because of this original meaning. This is surely true for the italian or french term : expatriato (ital) or expatrié (fr.).
I’d really like to know more about the whole discussion about the terminology “Expat” or “Expatriate” here in Europe.

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Diane Lemieux recently wrote an interesting article about the definition of expats, expatriates and the blindness of expat privilege. – In my personal opinion, the perception of the term “expat” or “expatriate” depends on the context and the people who use it. I think that many people wouldn’t consider themselves as expats when they associate a certain standard and profile of expats. The term in itself is being used and understood in many different ways around the world and it would be a great help to know also the opinion of people from the most diverse backgrounds and “expat lives”.

Related articles

• “So Where’s Home?” | A Film On The Identity Of The TCK (Third Culture Kid)
• The way I see the world as A Third Culture Kid and the way the world sees me…
• Where is home? (or how I became a third culture kid)
• Global Nomads and Existential Migrants
• EXPAT BOOK REVIEW: “Expat Life Slice By Slice” by Apple Gidley
• So… where’s home? [from a TCK’s perspective]
• Are “Transnationals” The New Global Executives ?