Third Cultures—The (Cursed) Gold of Migrants?

Migrants, voluntarily or not, have significant encounters with various ways of being, social organization, geographies, and circumstances. Nowadays, even non-migrants have such encounters due to globalization (see also this blog’s “About” page, “Why Migrant Knowledge?”). Either way, migration, whether one’s own or another’s, is not like travel. During travel, encounters with foreign cultures are most commonly fleeting; foreign cultures can be pointed out, admired, or laughed at, and then potentially forgotten. Migration, by contrast, implies a need to find one’s own place within a new or changing place and society. This, then, generally requires migrants to examine their own norms and values and those of the new location(s) in depth, questioning what is “normal.” Other questions then follow naturally: Do I relate more to one culture, or to the other? What do I want? Some migrants experience a deep longing for their previous or “home” reality and may reject what they find, at least partially. Conversely, some might find their new reality more appealing. Most commonly, migrants experience a combination of the two. This is where third cultures emerge.

Some migrants may have this experience only once and then return to relative stability. One may travel to find work in another region or country, in a city rather than the rural home one is used to, or vice versa, before settling into a routine there, comparing two realities and finding one’s place. But others keep moving and relocating longer and more frequently, usually across countries and often continents. Such migration has profound consequences on their knowledge processing, transfer, creation, and rejection.

Third Culture Kids: A Specific Kind of Migrants?

A third culture kid is most famously defined as “a person who spends a significant part of his or her first eighteen years of life accompanying parent(s) into a country or countries that are different from at least one parent’s passport country(ies) due to a parent’s choice of work or advanced training.”¹ The 1970s and 1980s saw globalization intensify, sharply increasing the number of people who migrated for their jobs—in diplomatic, missionary, international development, military, academic, or corporate work, and so on. Such jobs tend to be temporary, for terms of two to six years but rarely more in one location. In diplomatic or international development work, regulations often stipulate that leadership staff, especially, must rotate.

The scholarly literature on the concept of the “third culture kid” is booming, especially in psychology, intercultural relations, language and communication studies, and migration. Perhaps this is unsurprising as the first and second generations of more classic third culture kids have been growing into adulthood over the past twenty years, and some have clearly chosen to pursue academic study of the phenomenon they themselves experienced² (like this author; see biography below) or through outlets such as podcasts,³websites, non-fiction,⁴ fiction, etc. Most of these sources, including academic literature, present “third culture kids” and “adult third culture kids” as a specific kind of migrant differentiated largely by the temporary nature of their mobility: they tend to know from the beginning when their stay “abroad” will end. They often go to elite international schools, where they may encounter a specific, privileged group of people from their previous country and location. At the same time, the parents’ work often brings them into contact with local populations beyond school in churches, international cooperation workshops, diplomatic events, trips to visit poor or underprivileged populations, military aid initiatives, or corporate promotional events. The parents’ work in these areas, however, is frequently grounded in an implicit judgment of local populations, usually in contrast to their more celebrated “home” culture—even when the relationship to local cultures is based in kindness. Think of missionary work, which aims to bring a given religion to those who do not yet adhere to it, while this is often perceived as providing salvation to the local population. Similarly, development aid (or “collaboration”) work usually builds on the premise that it is provided by a society further along a linear path of ideal development than the locals being helped. Even if not every individual working in these positions holds such views, the dominant logic of the work tends to support such underlying philosophies. One hopes that this would be less the case in academic contexts, though academics, too, probably perceive their external knowledge a valuable addition to the local context. In the same way, military and corporate workers are likely to aim to bring some external improvement that locals would otherwise not achieve on their own. Temporary jobs like these, after all, only make sense if the deployed workers are seen as bringing something valuable to a place without (enough of) it, be it in development, religion, a product, military strength/strategy, or diplomatic contact with another country (unless one openly considers the activity purely extractive). Children growing up in places like these are likely, then, to have a very specific kind of contact there during a significant but also (relatively) short life phase—contact that, in contrast to their parents perhaps, they may not (initially) critically reflect on. Faced with this contact, they might choose to pretend neutrality, or to cocoon themselves in one of the cultures present (that of the international children, or of the parents’ culture, or of the best friend’s culture, etc.). This reality is soaked up into personalities that may choose to embrace or reject difference, but, in any case, they are forced to acknowledge difference.⁵

Of course, many of the experiences third culture kids have are similar to those of other migrant groups—perhaps more than third culture kids seem to be aware of, based on the existing literature. For instance, like migrants, they must confront the impact of moving between cultures; they need to adapt and adjust, developing skills—for better and worse—to adjust to various realities; they may feel rootless and restless when faced with seemingly ever more stable peers less used to migration, and so on. The mix of cultures that emerges from significant contact with two or more cultures, the “third culture” unique to each person with undeniable “points of encounter” with other third cultures,⁶ is not unique to “third culture kids.” But this “third culture,” more broadly understood, may have specific potential (and challenges), not least in terms of knowledge.

Third Cultures and Knowledge

Third cultures—regardless of how they emerge—have important repercussions on an individual’s (and society’s?) understanding of knowledge. Their existence depends on the dialectic between the apparent opposites of diversity and unity: two evidently different cultures coexist within one entity, one individual, coloring their experience of any reality, whether one of these two cultures or a different foreign context. For instance, having grown up in Germany, Guatemala, and Brazil, I am highly conscious of the differences between these contexts, and yet I see the world—in these places and any other place I go—through the combined cultural lens of these three. My experiences gave me specific knowledge pertaining to each culture, and yet I also have knowledge of how to navigate between these cultures—physically, emotionally, mentally, linguistically, etc. I also know that every assumption I make about what is normal is questionable—whether it is the hour at which I have lunch or dinner, the mode of transport I feel safe using on my own (at night, or at any time of day), the clothes I must be ready to wear outside and inside, whether I should take my shoes off when entering a home or must keep them on. It does not stop at an awareness of the fragility of assumptions about such daily activities: it goes on to touch how I understand my rights as a woman or mother; or how I should present myself as a researcher—even what it means to be honest, how to use and interpret the words “yes,” “no,” and “maybe,” and how to think about time and space. For example, I am aware that frequently a “yes” to an invitation to catch up over coffee in a Latin American context will mean “maybe,” while in a German context this would almost immediately be followed by setting a date, time and location. And even as I shift between these realities and sometimes lose myself in the contradictions, I know that I am one person at the end of the day, and that all these contradictions and complementarities can, indeed, exist within me and even make me stronger—if I find ways to access and use them.

Merely facing such variability does not mean one will embrace it or be constantly aware of it. Conversely, people without significant “third culture” experiences may be capable of understanding the deep intertwining of difference and similarity, too. To be sure, nearly every person is likely to have had some contact with various cultures—through the internet or television, at the grocery store, school, with the construction company currently building local roads, an aid corporation or military base nearby, the Italian or Chinese restaurant around the corner, the brand of donated shoes one just received. Perhaps seeking out the third cultures within ourselves can be a source of thinking otherwise,⁷ allowing us to deal anew with social, political, and even economic polarization with a different kind of creativity. As with any proposal and any potential, there is no guarantee of a particular outcome, and the beholder, in any case, makes the judgment, but there is potential here. Perhaps we can then all ask our inner migrant (whether mobile or immobile) what knowledge we unite within ourselves. What is your third culture? And how can your third culture allow you to embrace otherness and kindness for a better future?