INTRODUCTION
Everyone is interdependent. In the words of Martin Luther King, […] “before we leave for our jobs, we are already beholden to more than half of the world”.[1]
We have entered an era of post-globalisation, where we have created borders. These cultural constructs can take many different meanings: a border can be a space that is “between” things, that separates, or that puts in contact people, things, cultures, identities, and spaces different from each other. In this way, we now have landscapes that are cultural products before natural ones, we have created limits that can have a lot of potential, but in what ways? Do they possess the ability to connect, establish relationships, and mediate two distinct realities? The limit, the border, and the frontier, particularly in our era, can generate relationships and opportunities. Does that border define us? Does that place affect our identity?
The world of today is one where the meaning of citizenship has changed along with our sense of identity.
In which way does the process of globalization affect our sense of identity? Globalization has impacted our “persona” by homogenizing our differences, and our cultural expressions into a single global culture dominated by Western norms. So being different is seen as something unusual, something to not be proud of, something to hide in order to be accepted by society. An irrational logic that has led to conflicts, to genocides, to wars, to hate and discrimination, to a society organized by categories. We, as humans, tend to organize our existence and everything that is related to it into categories, to simplify it, to put an order to that chaos that defines our life, but is it really necessary? Is it the right way to define our identity? We cannot avoid the differences, we cannot eliminate the “stranger”, everyone is a stranger to someone else and everyone is essential to the other, coexistence is possible but only if we realize the power that relies on our being different.
Some people live their life running away, looking for a place to call home, others live far away from their home and miss it every day, and yet others are in a place where they don’t completely belong, still looking for home. All these cases can make us realize how statelessness is not only a condition but can be more of a feeling, and this condition is related to that homogenization that has put limits and standards on our possibilities to be.
The main goal is recognition: on the one hand, there are the privileged who can compose their identity as they wish by also exploiting the resources of the planet, on the other, there are the ones who can’t choose their identity, the ones that have to accept an identity sewn on to them by others. Most of the time these identities are stereotyped and very hard to get rid of. In general, people live along these two opposite poles, but in-between, we have people who are without an identity, without the possibility to be recognized in society (illegal immigrants, refugees of war, etc…). Each of us tries hard to find solutions to problems that have arisen from social and economic changes. There aren’t institutions or states that can protect people from global events, so individualism has become global.[2]
Identity is no longer determined by birth, as in societies founded on class, but by individual history, by the efforts of individuals to realize belonging to one class or another, society has delineated identity as a task and no longer as a condition.
In this essay I invite you to explore how citizenship is felt, how it does or doesn’t affect our identity, how life as a third culture kid (TCK) can create a sense of rootlessness and restlessness, where home is “everywhere and nowhere”[2], and what it means for a third culture kid to come from many places and none.
Discover how identity is felt today in a world where everything seems superficial and all peculiarities have lost their importance, because they are hidden behind those big standards whose shadows have covered our sight and made us see in only one way. It’s like we have lost the capacity to see with our eyes because we got used to seeing with our minds. This research can contribute to making us realize the existence of an interdependence with the stranger and acknowledge how we feel about our identity, what our place in this world is and how we can find it. Embracing complexity may be the key to it.
Explore these questions through a reflexive journal as a TCK, through an analysis of my interviewees’ experiences, all those scenarios that influence identity, the hypothetical necessity of citizenship, or the presence of a global community to which we can belong as (citizens of the world).
GLOBALIZATION: WHAT DO WE THINK OF IT?
Today we live in a globalized world, where everything and everyone is interconnected with the rest of the world. There are some positive aspects as well as negative ones depending on your perspective, on where you are from. As Europeans, we view globalization as an opportunity to live a modern life, to have all kinds of commodities, to travel, to speak one language and be understood, to have all sources of knowledge at our hands, live in the center of the globalized market. This interdependency can be a source of strength but also a weakness. It’s fundamental to keep in mind that we need each other, it’s impossible to sustain ourselves without any help because the web of dependency has already been spun. Our identity is strongly dependent on the other, and how we feel this connection is what builds our persona. In a world that is a mix of cultures, there is still fear of difference, of the minority, the aim is to achieve homogenization, to have everything under control. Uniqueness can be a reason to feel wrong, to be judged, to feel ashamed, just because it doesn’t fit the “normality” of – the so-called – society.
Each of us is fundamental to sustaining the balance of the world, and still there is fear, still there is racism, still there is prejudice, still there is exploitation of people, still there is a pyramid of classes, still there is no equality, still we don’t trust the stranger.
With migration, each corner of the world is filled with different ethnicities, traditions, cultures, where children learn to adapt, to create their identity under the influence of their environment. Education differs from culture to culture, and it is the main tool through which children are raised. Through schools, through parents, the child’s persona is shaped.
In a country where the child is a guest, how does the child react to those influences?
This case study is about what it means to live as an outsider in a globalized world.
THIRD CULTURE KIDS
Third Culture Kids (or TCKs), is a term coined by US sociologist Ruth Hill Useem in the 1950s, for children who spend their formative years in places that are not their parents’ homeland. Globalization has made TCKs more common.
TCKs often develop an identity that’s rooted in people rather than places, and they are more likely to speak more than one language, have a broader world view and be more culturally aware. However, life as a TCK can create a sense of rootlessness and restlessness, where home is “everywhere and nowhere”, leading to some difficulties, stronger need to feel accepted and integrated. This need for integration is what may lead TCKs to choose between their origins and their new home. It can make them feel lost, belonging to nowhere.
The third culture is the childhood home of those who did not experience comprehensive connection to a single place as children. It is located not in geography, but in relationships. While the first and second cultures are primarily about place, the third culture is about experience
TCKs do not grow up in any one culture, but in between them, influenced by multiple cultures.
It is in the third culture they find the comfort and connection of shared experience. For them, the Third Culture is a place of belonging.[3]
HOW THE EXTERNAL WORLD AND CULTURE ARE ESSENTIAL TO BUILDING OUR PERSONA
Culture is essential for the development of our identity: Society is within the individual and our individuality consists of a combination of socially acquired features, ideas, skills, etc.
Our most intimate core, our private ideas and feelings have their origin in human interaction: culture is the primary mode of human adaptation.
Thanks to studies from cultural psychology we can explore how cultural beliefs and social practices regulate, express, and transform the human psyche: the everyday practises and routines are seen as expressing as well as creating culture, this means that we are not considered as passively acquiring culture, but culture is dynamically created and recreated in social interactions which in return are embedded in broader cultural meaning systems and practises.
Communities provide individuals with identities, social roles, values, norms, stories, myths, and sense of historical continuity, they are pivotal for socialization and psychological development.[4]
For many migrants, however, identities may be difficult to construct as they encounter different linguistic and cultural practices as well as discrimination in their new home countries. Migrants, therefore, may be socially constrained in their capacity to identify themselves.
Generations of immigrants in Western societies negotiate between cultural sets: the inherited and the acquired culture. This negotiation also involves personal dimensions such as identity, and it deals with the assimilative pressures of the society where the TCKs have grown up: a context where their ethnic and religious identities are combined and mixed. Their ethnic, national, and religious ties are intertwined with the pressures from the community they perceive as the most important.[5]
The interview responses highlight how complex these individuals find managing their ethnic identities.
INTERVIEWS DATA
I engaged in two interviews of 1-1.5 h, with TCKs (in their 20s) who both have Filipino roots but the interviewee 1 was born in Rome and the interviewee 2 was born in the Philippines but at the age of 8, he moved to Rome.
“The truth is that there is not really a place where I feel like I belong, in the sense if I live here in Rome I feel like I belong to this place but if I had to move to any other place I would belong to it”-Interviewee 1-
“I do not have a place I call home: if I am in Rome I call Rome my home because in the end it’s where I live, but I would also call the Philippines as home because first of all it is where I was born but the place where I am at that precise moment is what I mostly call home”-Interview 2-
“I have never said to be completely Italian and also not be proud of it but I do not feel 100% Italian: first of all, for my aesthetics but otherwise yes, because in the end I grew up here and I learned to love and respect the tradition, the food, the language, and especially the way of thinking as if it were mine”-Interviewee 2-
It’s like being in a position that is in the middle between our two homes, where you can’t decide which one you completely belong to, and so you’ll always have this feeling through which you don’t identify yourself with one identity, but multiple.
EPILOGUE
“Where are you from?” Has always been the question I’ve had so much difficulty answering, because I have always wondered: what is it that they want to know? Because I know that telling them I am Italian, will not give them satisfaction; it is not what they want to hear; I know they want to hear the opposite, and so as an answer, I say that I have origins elsewhere but I was born here, as if I wanted to justify myself in some way, as if I were trying to prove that in the end, I am exactly like them. But they will never see this, and maybe that’s something to accept. The negotiation between different identities, between the layers of different value systems, is part of the process of becoming “white”, “accepted “, “integrated”, of changing your race and your class by assimilating the dominant culture. Except that, although you may assimilate white values, you can never quite become white enough.
Translation is a way of thinking about how languages, people, and cultures are transformed as they move between different places. It can also be used more metaphorically, as a way of describing how the individual or the group can be transformed by changing their sense of their own place in society. Languages, like classes and nations, exist in a hierarchy: as does translation itself, traditionally thought of in terms of an original and an inferior copy.[6] A feeling of integration may not be that necessary; we should embrace cultural authenticity.
Our problem is that we feel like nobody, like the child of a middle line that connects our two houses that we will never feel are truly ours. But we should make peace with it. We should realize that we don’t need any kind of acceptance to be, we don’t necessarily need to belong to one community to identify ourselves, we can find ourselves everywhere. We should embrace the peculiarity that makes us strangers, because there is power in that. By being a stranger you have full potential to create things, to make history, to build your identity and embrace all the power that comes with living a life on the border. It’s in your history that the world sustains itself.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
[1] King, Martin Luther. 1967. Where do we go from here: Chaos or community?
[2] -Il senso del confine -Conversation with Piero Zanini, about his work: Significati del confine. I limiti naturali, storici, mentali, Bruno Mondadori Milan 1997
[3] Crossman, Tanya. 2016. Misunderstood: The impact of growing up overseas in the 21st century
[4] Valsiner, Jan (eds.). 2012. The Oxford Handbook of culture and psychology. New York: Oxford University Press, (ch-3 and ch-6)
[5] Rizzo, Marco, Anna Miglietta, Silvia Gattino, Angela Fedi. 2020. I Feel Moroccan, I Feel Italian, and I Feel Muslim: Second Generation Moroccans and Identity Negotiation between Religion and Community Belonging.
[6] Fanon, Frantz. 1952. Black Skins, White Masks.
– Assmann, Jan and John Czaplicka. 1995. Collective Memory and Cultural Identity.
– Barth, Fredrik. 1969. Ethnic Groups and Boundaries.
– Latham, Lechowick Rick. 2024. I won’t let them be like me: Ezidi Women’s Agency and Identity after the Sinjar genocide.
