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Third
Culture Kids
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"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.”
This
group includes:
-
Traditional TCKs [1]
--Children who move into another culture
with parents due to a parent’s career choice
-
Bi/multi-cultural/ and/or
bi/multi-racial children
—Children born to parents from at least two cultures or races
-
Children of immigrants
—Children whose parents
have made a permanent move to a new country where they were not
originally citizens
-
Children of refugees
—Children whose parents are living outside their original
country or
place due to unchosen circumstances such as war, violence, famine,
other natural disasters
-
Children of minorities
—Children whose parents are from a racial or ethnic group
which is not
part of the majority race or ethnicity of the country in which they
live.
-
International adoptees
—Children adopted by
parents from another country other than the one of that
child’s birth
-
“Domestic”
TCKs
—Children
whose parents have moved in or among various subcultures within that
child’s home country.
- Special note:
Children are often in more than one of these circles at the same time.
(e.g. A traditional TCK who is also from a minority group; a child of
immigrants whose parents are from two different cultures, etc.) This
helps us understand the growing complexity of the issues we face in our
changing world .
"No
longer can we base our paradigms on those learned from the monoculture
of our parents," says Ruth van Reken.
As
people travel more and trade is being globalised, there are fewer truly
monocultural societies. Diversity is everywhere.
Four
basic cultural types have been identified by van Reken and David
Pollock:
•
Foreigner - look different, think different
•
Hidden Immigrant - look alike, think different
•
Adopted - look different, think alike
•
Mirror - look alike, think alike
For
the Foreigner who looks different and thinks differently, things are
relatively straight forward - people know you are different and act
accordingly. [2]
For
Hidden Immigrants, such as TCKs
repatriated to their home country, things can be rather confusing as
people expect you to know the same things and know the language.
For
TCKs International Schools can be a real bonus. "Every one can be who
they want - this is normal. You can't lose who you are, you can only
keep growing," says van Reken.
References:
Ruth
Van Reken and Paulette Bethel [1]
Are
cross cultural kids prototypes of the future? [2]
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