ETCI Identity Construction

During the analysis there were several aspects that kept coming up in terms of how the ETCI negotiate a sense of self based on their multicultural influences. It seems as an all-encompassing personal trait, which is a continuously emerging theme in the memoirs and can be seen as twofold. I call this the self-inscribed category of being a cosmopolite, but at the same

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150 Maureen A. Burns, ‘Documenting Mobility’, in Writing out of Limbo: International Childhoods, Global Nomads and Third Culture Kids (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Pub, 2011), 356–70, https://web-p-

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151 Roberts, ‘Everyday Practices of Home-Making,’ 104.

61 time this identification also comes with a constant feeling of restlessness in their inherent uprootedness, as the following quote by Pico Iyer exemplifies:

“It was only recently, in fact, that I realized that I am an example, perhaps, of an entirely new breed of people, a transcontinental tribe of wanderers that is multiplying as fast as IDD lines and IATA flights . We are the Transit Loungers, forever heading to the Departure Gate, forever orbiting the world.”¹⁵²

While at first glance, this feeling of constantly longing for another adventure and being unable to not give into the travel bug, “forever orbiting the world”¹⁵³ can be seen as something quite unsettling, in the analysed cases it is taken as something positive and privileged, as an ability to love foreignness in any places visited. This restlessness, therefore, becomes a distinguishable characteristic, setting ETCI apart from a broader collective group. So, instead of feeling a sense of alienation as a natural state wherever they stop or get rooted along the way during their lives, they take this as an opportunity to feel adjusted everywhere. There is a sense of agency, which is created in turning around the negative aspects of this constant rootlessness and restlessness, where home does not just become a singular place, but is described as the existence of “a hundred homes”¹⁵⁴, where the individual can decide how and where to place themselves depending on the context.

There is also this cultural chameleon theme, where the mix and matching between different countries, cultural contexts, ethnicities, going beyond the identification of modern-day nation states becomes an inherent aspect of how ETCI define themselves. The following quote by Pico Iyer gives an example of this theme:

“I have a wardrobe of selves from which to choose. And I savor the luxury of being able to be an Indian in Cuba (where people are starving for yoga and Tagore), or an American in Thailand; to be an Englishman in New York.¹⁵⁵

He, as such, demonstrates his capacity to change his identity to fit into many cultural contexts, and be completely accepted in two or more cultures. In Camilla Tranchieri’s memoir, the

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152 Iyer, ‘Living in the Transit Lounge,’ 188.

153 Iyer, ‘Living in the Transit Lounge, ’188.

154 Iyer, ‘Living in the Transit Lounge,’ 254.

155 Iyer, ‘Living in the Transit Lounge,’ 258.

62 ETCI’s capacity for internal adaptation is well explained, as well as the capacity to blend into varied contexts. This again shows the cultural chameleon theme, where the mix and matching between different countries, cultural contexts ethnicities, going beyond the identification of modern-day nation states becomes an inherent aspect of how ETCIs define themselves. She describes her ability to switch between identities depending on the cultural setting, which equates to having numerous cultural identities that she can decide to choose from:

“I learn to shed skins with great agility, remaining naked only long enough to drink in my surroundings, to decide which new skin I should produce. Despite my efforts, what I finally come up with in each new place doesn’t quite match the native skin. It doesn’t make the grade. I remain the visitor, the stranger.

Other. I learn to wear that new, nonmatching skin like a magical dress that shines in the dark.”¹⁵⁶

According to Moore and Barker, TCIs appear to take this ability for granted because such identity changes happen naturally rather than because of a conscious effort to fit in. So, the overall analysis of the memoirs also made it clear that the ETCIs described how they can switch between two or more cultural identities with ease. This capacity of being able to fluidly transit between cultures can be seen as an example of intercultural literacy, it can therefore be argued that ETCIs have the linguistic proficiency and communication skills required for successful cross-cultural interaction. Similar findings can be found in the study by Moore and Barker, who identified shifting identities in their interview partners and the ability to blend different cultural identities into one as a prevalent result.¹⁵⁷

Moreover, Camilla Tranchieri mentions her Italian heritage based on her father, but does not identify herself as Italian or mentions any formal citizenship in that aspect. She also describes a fond memory she has about Salzburg and a dear friend that she met there, but the connection established seems clearer to the local area of Salzburg as a city, rather than to Austria as a country. The same goes for all the places she mentions in her chapter and that she was associated with throughout her lifetime in the US. The connection, as such, it seems is more so established to a city and smaller-scale urban environment, than a whole nation or country itself. With every anecdote to her life as a stop along the way, or a person she refers to of importance, she describes the cities she lived in as just another “bead to string”¹⁵⁸ and speaks

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156 Trinchieri, ‘A String of Beads,’ 1186-1188.

157 Moore and Barker, ‘Confused or Multicultural: Third Culture Individuals’ Cultural Identity,’ 5.

158 Trinchieri, ‘A String of Beads,’ 1364.

63 of those people in terms of the urban environment, such as for instance her husband who is described as a “Virginian”¹⁵⁹ instead of an American.

The same can be observed for the other memoirs, where the ETCIs refer to the spatial places that they resided in or have a national identification with in urban terms. Sara Mansfield Taber, for instance, speaks of her experiences in the Netherlands in the following way:

“A taxi transported us to our new home, a yellow brick row house in a vast new suburban development of identical houses at the raw edge of The Hague. Small, low - walled gardens stood to the front and rear of each narrow, upright house, along broad streets with recently planted thin trees. In this house in suburban Wassenaar, where we lived for a year or so, my room, one of three on the upper story, was sharp - cornered and white – walled.”¹⁶⁰

Therefore, this also shows how ETCIs can connect strongly with experiences, emotions and rather localised than national aspects. It also shows how they may feel an identification with a place by creating a sense of representation and a personal relation to a specific spatial place. In this example by Sara Mansfield Taber, she describes her connection to a house in the suburbs of The Hague and her own room, which she considers a home, even though it ended up being just a temporary stop in her upbringing.¹⁶¹ Similarly to Gustafson’s research the ETCIs stories, therefore, showed strong attachments to several different places and this attachment was strengthened by experiences, emotions, and local social networks, as well as an identification and sense of representation of that place in relationship with people from other places. This, in turn, also insinuates the proven difficulty in identifying with a nation state and a singular national identity. Thus, it goes in line with previous findings about ETCIs, where they attach less in citizenship terms, but rather with local aspects and surroundings. This sense of disconnectedness to the national can be seen as something fundamental in the ETCI experience, during formative years and as a result continues in the adult life as well.¹⁶²

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159 Trinchieri, ‘A String of Beads,’ 1365.

160 Mansfield Taber, ‘Rain Light,’ 413.

161 Gustafson, ‘Roots and Routes: Exploring the Relationship between Place Attachment and Mobility,’ 667-686.

162 David C. Pollock, Ruth E. Van. Reken, and Michael V. Pollock, ‘Chapter 4: Why a Cross-Cultural Childhood Matters’, in Third Culture Kids Growing Up Among Worlds, 3rd ed. (Boston/London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing (Tolino Edition), 2017), 67-68.

64 Language as part of the cultural anchors was an important theme that keeps emerging throughout the analysis of the memoirs, but was also a crucial theme in the interviews, as discussed above. As the following passage describes, home is constructed using language and is a tool that both stays with the individual, no matter the location, and creates a sense of belonging to the collective group belonging to the language:

“If I have any deeper home, it is, I suppose, in English. My language is the house I carry round with me as a snail his shell; and in my lesser moments I try to forget that mine is not the language spoken in America, or even, really, by any member of my family.”¹⁶³

Language can, therefore, be seen as crucial to an individual’s identity as it allows one to express one's experiences, memories, and socialization. This theme seems especially essential for ETCIs, as they have no singular place to call a home. So, specific languages, which make up a part of the identity of the ETCIs become a means to mediate their human experience and, therefore, result in an essential anchoring mechanism to either create a belonging to the passport culture or the current country of residence. Furthermore, the importance of language in creating or evoking memory is a significant aspect as well that became evident through the analysis. Memory, as a subjective anchor and language, as a cultural anchor, are fundamentally linked, both in terms of recalling past experiences and the creating new ones. For this reason, language inherently has a quality of allowing ETCIs to travel in time and to relive memories, while also allowing the individual to have a distinction between what is in the present, the past or the future. The spoken word, therefore, becomes something that is communicated or expressed, a discovery of one’s own existence through time and space and different cultural contexts and how it can coexist with the preservation of memories, different cultural influences and their attached meaning across time and spatial distances of their highly mobile lives.¹⁶⁴

As outlined in the theoretical framework, notions of home are perceived as ambiguous and hard to be captured in words, outlining the complexity and fluidity of the emotional attachments to a place or a feeling that they perceive as a home. Cason argues that for TCIs a complexity in the home relationship to a geographical place is revealed, as well as how challenging evoking meaningful engagement and attachment to geographical places generally

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163 Iyer, ‘Living in the Transit Lounge,’ 293-294.

164 Henrik Wu and Rebecka Koolash, ‘Life Stories of Swedish Third Culture Kids: Belonging and Identity’

(Malmö, Malmö University, 2011), https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1480953/FULLTEXT01.pdf, 31.

65 can be. The tensions and difficulties of a TCI's cultural positioning presuppose expressions of a hybrid culture that is continuously changing in order to engage with any reified concepts of culture or nation. As they struggle with the ongoing issues of resistance in terms of building and rebuilding their identity, due to their several cultural influences, TCIs are positioned as almost permanent residents of a “Third Space”¹⁶⁵, which seems one of the distinctive characteristics of TCIs rooted cosmopolitanism.¹⁶⁶ Rooted cosmopolitanism is centred on the notion that enduring connections on a local, territorial, or community level are not incompatible with an open, questioning approach toward variety and a dedication to universal themes. This means, that for the ETCIs, rooted cosmopolitanism undoubtedly brings together a desire for diversity, a global perspective, and ongoing challenges to notions of oneself, identity, and belonging with an ease of familiarity born of early engagement in precisely such social contexts, experienced frequently also through expatriate organizational cultures. This, in turn, implies that cosmopolitan rootedness need not be geographical but rather relies on a more intricate and broader transnational network that connects a distinctive but globally different organization culture or an expatriate culture.¹⁶⁷ Anna Maria Moore describes in her memoir how she feels at home with other minorities. She underlines this desire for diversity, and a different perspective that cannot seem to be found in the monocultural broader collective, resulting in a view that people with a migration background can relate better to ongoing struggles of her own identity and belonging:

“I understood but didn’t speak much English at first and my first grade teacher clearly believed I was a Mexican immigrant girl due to my tanned skin and dark coloring. As an outsider, I felt at home with other minorities. I befriended an African-American and a Chinese girl, and got into fights in the schoolyard with boys who taunted us.”¹⁶⁸

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165 The Third Space, as described by Bhabha, an important contemporary postcolonial scholar, “though

unrepresentable in itself, which constitutes the discursive conditions of enunciation that ensure that the meaning and symbols of culture have no primordial unity or fixity.” Cf. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 37.

166 Cason, ‘Third Culture Kids: Migration Narratives on Belonging, Identity and Place,’ 288.

167 Cason, ‘Third Culture Kids: Migration Narratives on Belonging, Identity and Place,’ 266.

168 Anna M. Moore, ‘Continental Shifts’, in Writing out of Limbo: International Childhoods, Global Nomads and Third Culture Kids (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Pub, 2011), 180–196, https://web-p-

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66

“That was how it began and how it has been ever since: one flight after another, one house to another, one city to another, one country to another, one continent to another. I’ve lived on five and I can’t guarantee that number won’t increase. I’m not finished experiencing the world, nor has the restlessness left me. The world is my playground.”¹⁶⁹

This also goes in line with the storytelling in the memoir of Sara Mansfield Taber as well, where she describes that “To be on the way somewhere feels familiar, like old shoes.“¹⁷⁰ In the lives of ETCI, a cosmopolitan way of living, and, therefore, an innate need to move around is a crucial part of who they are, inherent of a cosmopolitan outlook.