Discussion of findings

Massey describes home as “an open, fluid, and changeable geographical concept, defined by relations, ongoing negotiations, processes and boundaries”¹⁷⁹, while Crossman describes homemaking as creating a “comfort zone,”¹⁸⁰ by creating habits, rituals, and patterns that make the individual feel familiar to other people around them in the dominant culture. To contribute to this view, this study looked at belonging interpreted as feeling "at home" and as sharing similar values and a related worldview with an identifiable social grouping, which can be seen as the third culture for ETCIs. The sample under study was comprised of 8 autobiographical narrative interviews and then complemented by an analysis of three memoirs and three personal essays. This allowed for a rich and in-depth research of themes from both professional ETCIs experiences and more mundane ETCIs experiences. As mentioned throughout the thesis, TCIs end ETCIs as a migrant category is a highly privileged group of society. Nonetheless, even within the category of social classes there are nuances. To reach some inclusivity, younger and more mundane and ordinary interviewees were combined with narratives from memoirs and personal essays by prominent ETCIs from two different publications. This combination in analysis provided opportunities to encompass more variation, while it provided overall richer results in the comparability of notions of home and belonging for ETCIs. This makes the research approach of this thesis not only out of the common, by combining different nuances of a privileged social class through an interdisciplinary application of the methodologies and theories. But it also provides a more critical reflection and visibility on ETCIs’ anchoring strategies by analysing and comparing two different data sets of individuals from a different age group and professional backgrounds.

The representation of the experiences of ETCIs from different professional backgrounds and geographical influences gives a more comprehensive and universal outcome for the ETCI experience of growing up between different cultures.

All of this leads to the answering of the following research questions: “How is home and belonging constructed by TCI influenced by and coming from a European cultural background? How do they establish feelings of home and belonging to their geographical

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179 Picton and Urquhart, ‘Third Culture Kids and Experiences of Places,’ 1590-1593.

180 Gene H. Bell-Villada, Nina Sichel, and Faith Eidse, ‘Introduction,’ 11.

71 locations and to their legal countries? What and who encompasses the third culture? Are there similar anchoring points in place between the different TCI’s stories?”

To answer these questions, different names and theories can be mentioned to support the outcome of the study. First of all, ETCIs seem to construct home and belonging on several different levels and using several different anchoring strategies. The findings contribute amongst other to Grzyamala-Kazlowska’s understanding of the importance of social anchoring, where the emphasis lies in social relations and focuses on the ways in which individuals establish and maintain connectedness through those relations. Previous research suggests relationships generally, and therefore, social anchors are a major theme in the lives of ETCIs and that the networks they build are mostly rooted in expatriate culture, rather than the national culture. This is not so clear in the sample under study, as there are individuals for which both is applicable or sometimes the latter seems more evident than the former.

Nonetheless, the connection to individuals who had similar upbringings is highly sought after and becomes a major theme in a majority of the narratives. This group belonging, however, is not necessarily only to be found in expatriate cultures, at least not according to the selected sample, but can be found in the national culture, hence, the country of residence as well.

Therefore, group belonging can exist also in the geographical location, based on, for instance, common interests that go beyond having an international background. Connecting and feeling a sense of belonging with the expatriate bubble, hence, is not the only way of belonging to a collective. Creating a sense of belonging, therefore, goes hand in hand with identifying and connecting with a group, particularly when it comes to socio-cultural factors. This, in turn, seems to overlap with the theory of Yuval-Davis, who argues in her conceptualization of belonging that there exists an inextricable link between belonging and creating an emotional attachment to a social institution or group. Massey’s theorisation that home is a “complex product of the ever-shifting geography of social relations present and past”¹⁸¹ supports the importance of group belonging and relationships in creating a sense of belongingness as well.

This contributes also to the understanding of belonging as socially anchoring oneself and constructing a sense of community with others, rather than feeling belongingness to a spatial place.¹⁸²

Apart from the essential relationship aspect in creating a sense of home and belonging, this study also supports the argument by Roberts, where memory plays an essential role in how

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181 Massey, ‘Part II: Place and Identity,’ 172.

182 Massey, ‘Part II: Place and Identity,’ 115–174.

72 ETCIs anchor themselves in their geographical locations, as well as in their legal countries.

The ETCIs stories under study reveal, therefore, the use of the so-called travelling memory as an anchoring strategy. This travelling memory is created through small stories of everyday emplaced practices, that connect the individuals to small but impactful memories and rituals from previous stops during their upbringing.¹⁸³ This is also applicable to both data sets, resulting in this prevalent theme to be found in all the stories, making the in-depth outcomes of the thematic analysis between the two complimentary data sets more meaningful.

Home and belonging for ETCIs, no matter from which European background, age or professional field, also means having a strong sense of self-agency and creating continuity and permanence on highly individual terms, based on their background and migration trajectory.

This continuity, on the one hand, is established through the travelling memory, but also through deliberate engagement in the local culture, as for instance, through travel, language, culture classes or other activities where meetings with local peers are organised. Like this ETCIs manage to connect with a range of groups and social institutions, nationally and transnationally, which can enable a definition of home that goes beyond the traditional monocultural connotation of a single geographical location. Thus, creating a home in the culture of ETCIness also means having the power to decide on individual terms in how this term is defined, how the emotional connection is established, and how anchoring strategies, behaviours and rituals are autonomously negotiated on an individual level. Importantly, this also includes expressions and experiences of culture shock as “hidden immigrants,”¹⁸⁴ but at the same time finding comfort in feeling and being an outsider by constantly switching in-between different cultures.¹⁸⁵ The high levels of transience, which ETCIs encounter during their upbringing, creates a form of liminality, an in-betweenness due to their numerous relocations and influences. In this liminality the ETCIs under study are continually letting go of old attachments, while forging new ones. This feeling of in-betweenness, of letting go in the liminal space, can be seen as tumultuous for the individual as emotions of uncertainty, confusion, pain

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183 Roberts, ‘Everyday Practices of Home-Making,’ 105-106.

184 Hidden immigrant is a term coined by Pollock and Van Reken and is used to refer to a person who appears to be like everyone else on the outside in the dominant culture, but views life from different perspectives to that dominant culture. This person has internalized the mannerisms and culture of the foreign host nation to the point where it becomes a part of them and people around them may assume they have comparable cultural knowledge and worldviews because physically they appear as to be a part of the dominant group. Cf. Bell-Villada, Sichel, and Eidse, ‘Introduction,’ 4.

185 Bell-Villada, Sichel, and Eidse, ‘Introduction,’ 1-17.

73 anxiety and grief can arise. Nonetheless, the unique aspect here is that this space of liminality provides, at the same time, valuable grounds for ETCIs to create their own definition of home and belonging. This liminality, as such, is used by the above ETCIs to create a comfort zone in their third culture and in the fact that they do not have the permanence that other non-TCK people would have. This means they turn this negative aspect of transience, of liminality, around and build a space of self-assessment, reflection, perspective, anonymity, where they have all the self-agency and freedom of being in the in-between. Hence, they can have a fresh start and re-invent oneself independent of time and place due to their highly mobile upbringing.¹⁸⁶

The particular challenge of belonging for ETCIs is arriving at a shared history and cultural experience in a landscape of relationships that may be constantly shifting. ETCIs high mobility complicates the ways in which they locate themselves in relation to their social worlds.

Maintaining a sense of transnational belonging is, therefore, a common thread in the ETCI literature of this thesis and was also a recurring theme in the interviews and the textual accounts chosen for this thesis. The ETCIs under study and their multiple moves caused many of them to engage in complex interactions with friends and even acquaintances across multiple locations and to develop different anchoring methods to create a sense of home and belonging in different geographical locations. It can, therefore, be said that ETCIs make use of a transnational habitus, achieving a sense of transnational belonging in this way. The outcomes of this thesis suggest that creating belonging for ETCIs is an ongoing negotiated process, perhaps made even more valuable and delicate by the pressures of a sense of hybridity to the passport countries and the countries of residency. ETCIs, therefore have experiences in belonging which go beyond the national borders of today’s constituted nation states, and which can be rooted in transnational social fields.

This master thesis, therefore, provides an account on supporting the current body of research on ETCIs homemaking and belongingness. All in all, it can, therefore, be argued that the anchors represented by both the ETCIs personal narratives from the interviews, the memoirs and personal essays covered a wide range of anchoring strategies. Even though creating these anchoring strategies, and a sense of belongingness thereof is a highly individual undertaking, the innovative character in creating anchoring strategies of this specific migrant

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186 David C. Pollock, Ruth E. Van. Reken, and Michael V. Pollock, ‘Chapter 13: The Transition Experience’, in Third Culture Kids Growing Up Among Worlds, 3rd ed. (Boston/London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing (Tolino Edition), 2017), 245-248.

74 group becomes evident in the analysis. Home, for ETCI, therefore, has a highly emotional meaning, it is somewhere they feel they truly belong, tied strongly to the relationships they engage in. Thus, a sense of home can become something that goes beyond a singular physical place or a single culture and can exist for ETCIs by being open to options outside of the conventional monocultural ways of defining home. The majority of the ETCIs from this study do, therefore, feel like they belong to a collective or a community, creating their own third culture, a culture that is based more on a common experience than it is on a single location, nationality, or ethnicity.¹⁸⁷