Third Culture
What does it mean to be Third Culture? The term was coined to describe children of Americans, missionaries to be specific, living abroad but generally refers to individuals who’ve grown up with at least two distinct cultures, that of their parents and that of the country they lived in as children. The third culture feature comes from the “integration” or retention of the parents’ and local environment’s cultures, although many third culture kids grow up with more than 2 cultures. The result of such an upbringing differs from children raised in a monoculture namely in such characteristics as speaking more than one language. National or cultural allegiances may be blurred or more often expanded. It’s also subtly different from growing up as an immigrant or as an “expat”.
How third culture kids manifest their unique upbringing differs. Some may see it as a disadvantage, others a wealth, but the truth is it confers both.
I am a third culture kid. Often, when I briefly sketch my geographical history, people will comment on my rootlessness, to which I mumble a half-hearted apology. What I want to say is that I am not a tree. Actually, people are not trees. We are highly mobile and adaptable, roaming and roving this great planet for tens of thousands of years, our identities miscible.
Some aspects of being third-culture leave you on the outs. Most prominent is others’ expectation of national preference or allegiance. Because of my name and appearance, the expectation is often pushed onto my birth country, also one of my passport countries – a place I certainly have a link too, but not a very strong one.
Identity. What does that even mean? Why hold on to such a constraint, and give it so much value? I am here to tell you, as a mostly healthy adult, you don’t need a national or cultural identity to thrive. What you do need is economic opportunity and passport freedom. Money and mobility are key to living without partisanship or national or ethnic blahblahblah. You don’t need to “belong” to a national or ethnic group – as long as you have money. If that simple fact could be made better known, maybe all the fighting and racism and other nonsense that continues to plague our tiny world would finally ebb.
Though people like me challenge the widely held view that individuals need a “tribe”, I admit that I feel most at ease with other third culture people, especially those that, like me, have lived in developing and developed countries both, people who have traveled a great deal, understand how many forms a taxi can come in and who codeswitch as their first language.
Living in a bunch of countries in your formative years gets under your skin. It’s not just about traveling, it’s also about immersion, voluntary or not. It’s knowing the capitals of the world at a young age because your dad would come home every once in a while and suggest moving to, I don’t know, Bamako and damned if you were gonna ask where that was. It’s recognizing a last name’s ethnic origin because your school friends come from all kinds of countries, and most hold more than one passport too and if you’re curious at all, you look up those countries’ traditions and histories, to understand better how the world, global society, has coalesced into what it is. It means you don’t – and never will- have a home. So you know how to set up shop from a few key items from a suitcase. When disasters hit and victims feel bad about losing heirlooms, I want to tell them what my parents told me with every move – it’s ok, it’s just stuff. It’s being weird about the term cultural appropriation* because, I own all the cultures – we all do, it’s our human right! Third culture confers many idiosyncrasies that I should really gather together in a list, but one of them is rooting for the underdog, always, because I have seen, many of my peers have seen, the buffet of inequality displayed before us in ways that cannot be explained, or justified, or accepted. So for instance, the teams I root for in the World Cup depend on their country’s position of relative privilege to their opponent, not my personal link to them. France vs Germany? France. France vs Italy? Italy. Italy vs Cameroun? Cameroun. Totally. Transitive.
Some third culture kids I know have spurned their mixed up upbringing, choosing one culture to adhere to, strictly. I understand. It is exhausting to: explain yourself; move; and most of all, be lonely. I envied the clubs in college based on some ethnicity or other, I did. I mean, am I even Arab? Not culturally, for obvious reasons. Genetically, tenuous. I guess linguistically. Point is I have considered picking a culture and sticking to it but it would entail living a lie. Like cheating on your taxes to pay more tax (billionaires: please do). More third culture kids I know have continued their parents’ legacy, hopping around the world, or settling in very international cities. I am not certain their destiny was intentional. It’s just where they ended up, as a consequence of their upbringing.
A note on “I’m a world citizen” declarations. If you started traveling as an adult, found you like it and as a consequence claim world citizenship, please own it. Vote for the global population’s good. Reconsider flaming injustices, such as borders and shitty passports. In other words, don’t be a poseur: take on the responsibility of being a “World Citizen”.
A second more sobering note on third culture: its disadvantages notwithstanding, third culture arises from mobility, and therefore a modicum of economic privilege. It’s easy to claim World Citizenship when you have money. And if there was a solid lesson for me in the third culture gumbo I grew up in, it’s that money makes up for other social advantages one might bear, such as race.
Claiming third culture status is often met with envy. It’s true, it’s wonderful, liberating even, to have a chakchouka*-like quality to your identity, but it’s not something earned. While I appreciate (mostly) being third culture, I’m not proud. The coolest thing about being third culture is simply the undeniable understanding that ethnic, national and cultural identities are unnecessary and mostly ridiculous. And there, yes, there I afford myself the tiniest smidgen of knowledge smugness over the majority.
*Chakchouka (شكشوكة,) is Tunisian, with its etymology rooted in Berber. It is not Middle-Eastern (Tunisia being in Africa). If you find it in the Middle-East, it was imported from Tunisia. Why do I insist on this specification? Because Tunisia is a small, struggling, low-key country. It had its heyday but it is certainly an underdog on the world-stage. So please don’t take its successes away from it and do assign credit where it’s due. Let Tunisia keep Chakchouka!!!