Third Culture Kids Look for Identity at Columbia

Introducing myself to people is a challenge. Most people ask, “Where you are from?” expecting to hear a state—Nebraska, Florida, or, given my addiction to J.Crew sweaters, New Jersey. Few expect the surprising and confusing answer I often give them—“Guess.”

The truth, however, is more complicated. Like most people at Columbia, I have a legal nationality—a passport where my F1 visa was glued and stamped, occupying an entire page of national history. Unlike most people, however, I have no nation.

This, of course, depends on our meaning of nation and nationality. Yet under the agreement that nationality is contingent on a shared culture and sense of belonging to a certain group of people as delineated by imaginary borders, third culture kids—children who have grown up in two or more countries—often find themselves without a nation. Forced to leave their native countries, often at a young age, they find that they have little relation to their birth-culture, thereby rendering their legal nationality a faux. On the other hand, the constant moves prevent many from establishing a sense of connection to any culture or place. In the occasion that they may settle in one country for an extended period of time, ties to this country and culture may form—but from an outsider’s point of view that is generally based on the international community, as opposed to the national experience.

As a result of all this, third culture children go through a series of hardships that few can relate to or fully understand—the constant insecurity that, just as you were starting to make friends at your new school, you’ll have to leave; the frustration of living out of suitcases in small hotel rooms; the anger that breeds from always being an “outsider,” never speaking any language well enough, or looking “weird” for that country’s taste. Even when one manages to adapt to a country—even to adopt it as one’s own—the challenge comes when one is forced to leave it, or faces the reality that legally, one does not belong.

As such, third culture kids face a different set of issues than other international students, particularly those that have lived their entire lives in one country. For example, while adapting to a new city and environment might not prove as difficult after having undergone the process several times, the sense of displacement third culture kids feel may be exacerbated by the multiplicity of locales that one has lived in. So while settled physically in one place, one’s mind may not be there at all, maintaining to some extent the cultural views of their previous location(s).

Language is an issue that most international students struggle with. Our accents or slight twisting of meanings, even the use of certain expressions (or metric systems), can tell us apart in ways that are often not recognizable due to the assimilation of various languages and stylistic practices. Columbia is a welcoming campus that showcases these differences in an accepting atmosphere. Still, for third culture kids that have often been corrected for their use of language possibly in each country they have lived in, being corrected for mispronouncing one or two words can add to a swelling frustration. Reinforcing these students’ sense of non-belonging by correcting them, even if in a well-intentioned manner, may prove more harmful than helpful.

Perhaps the most difficult notion, though, is precisely the most important one—nationhood. It’s hard to place someone without knowing where they are from, since we have inherent ideas about what an Asian, Latin American, or Russian should be like—even though these stereotypes may not be true. Labeling someone who was born in Tuscany, lived all over Asia, but considers herself Japanese, will certainly prove a challenge. Because our notions of what this person is like are conflicted, we cannot place them and therefore the individual remains “unlabeled.” While this may sound like an improvement to the use of erroneous stereotypes, it also often makes it all the more difficult for students to identify with or recognize third culture kids. Since one doesn’t know what to think of them, one cannot think about them at all, reinforcing an “othering” and the sense of displacement previously mentioned. Many students may not experience this directly because they often choose one nationality above others, either their birth-country or the nation that they have chosen to be representative of them (in many cases, a nation that they have no legal ties to). This in itself presents problems, since one is restricted to that country’s identity while at the same time realizing that one a) was never fully integrated within that country and b) is prevented from ever being connected to a single nationality or culture by previous multicultural experiences.

Essentially, the struggle of third culture kids is the same type of struggle experienced by all college students—one of self-discovery. As studies on third culture kids advance, such as those performed by David Pollock in his book Third Culture Kids: The Experience of Growing Up Among Worlds, we may have a clearer understanding of the many systems at play in the formation of these individuals, and how best to accommodate them in the University environment. Such work is a helpful tool to students trying to understand their own experiences as third culture kids, as well as for those who seek to understand multiculturalism and the multiplicity of roles it can take.

The author is a Columbia College sophomore.