Where are you from? For most people this might be a pretty easy question to answer, but for third culture kids, it is not. Third culture kids are by definition, “children who were raised in a culture outside of their parents' culture for a significant part of their development years.” This means that TCKs often find “home” defined as “wherever I am,” or “wherever my family is.”
To answer the question where they are from creates a completely different problem. TCKs are not from the country in which they were raised and they were not raised in the country that their parents are from — their “passport” country. Let me use myself as an example.
I was born in Dakar, Senegal, and my parents are both United States citizens. This makes me a natural-born citizen and, in turn, a United States citizen. The thing is, I have lived in the United States for a total of five years, and in Africa, for a total of 13. I am not Senegalese, but I was not born in the country that I am a citizen of. So where am I from? I am an American, but if you asked me to specify where in America, I would not be able to tell you. I am not from either of the places my parents are from, and have lived in neither. I am not from Chicago, where we spent a year on return to the country, and I am not truly from the town I find myself residing in now, although sometimes I wish I were.
Third culture kids are from wherever they are at the time. We create friendships all over the world that can last lifetimes; we have second moms, brothers and sisters from different nationalities, our favorite dishes are foods you probably can’t pronounce, and we dress in clothes that might look weird to you unless you understand where they are from. We listen to just about every genre of music known to man and are often concerned with world news and politics.
These things make us who we are, and create the TCK brand. So, while we may not have any name to define where we are from, we are able to define who we are by the common experiences and difficulties we share with each other.
