I recently read Lisa Nan Joo’s piece about her experience as a transracial adoptee. She described her experience as belonging to a "Liminal Space." As a transracial and intercountry adoptee, and an adult third culture kid (ATCK), this description resonated with me. I don’t feel like I belong to any one culture or nationality, and I’ve always wondered if that was more a result of being an adult third culture kid or an intercountry and transracial adoptee. I imagine it’s both.
The concept of being “in the between,” “the liminal,” and “the not one, nor the other” is a sentiment echoed by many throughout the years—not limited to the groups I inhabit. This includes people of mixed heritage and race, immigrants, asylum seekers, refugees, and many others.
While reflecting on this, I was reminded of my research into third culture kids, which formed the basis of my dissertation. One central concept is the Cross-Cultural Kid model.
While undertaking my research into third culture kids I came across the concept of ‘The Cross-Cultural Kid (CCK) Model’ pioneered by Ruth E. Van Reken, a prominent adult third culture kid and educator. Although her work has focused prominently on TCKs, Van Reken has acknowledged that TCKs are simply a subset of CCKs. CCKs are defined as “a person who is living or has lived in – or meaningfully interacted with – two or more cultural environments for a significant period of time during childhood”.
Van Reken gives the following examples of cross-cultural kids but this is in no way an exhaustive list and is likely to continue to grow.
As you can see, there are many subsets of people who fit the cross-cultural kid model who have had experiences of, or are connected to, more than one culture. This could be through adoption, mixed heritages, migration or more as the illustration above demonstrates.
Sometimes these identities overlap, such as in my case (intercountry, transracial adoptee, and traditional third culture kid) or someone like Barack Obama who is a biracial, bicultural, a TCK and a racial minority within the USA. Another example includes the late Freddie Mercury, lead singer of the rock band Queen, who was born to Parsi-Indian parents in Zanzibar, attended English boarding schools in India, returned to Zanzibar and then fled Zanzibar Revolution with his family to the UK.
How people navigate these cross-cultural identities will be very personal to them and will differ substantially within each sub-group. However, cross-cultural people are united through a shared experience of multiple identities, impacted by culture, race, ethnicity, or migration—and the experience of living in a dominant monoculture where our identities are often challenged or rejected.
Van Reken recognised that cross-cultural children and adults have a different relationship to culture and identity than those who are monocultured. A limitation of the CCK model is perhaps its large focus on children. While cross-cultural children are significantly impacted by culture in their development, I would argue that adults too can become cross-cultural regardless of their childhoods. For example, many British-born individuals consider themselves Australian after immigrating to Australia as young adults, gaining citizenship, and starting families here.
Realistically, there are no ‘true’ monocultures as the human race has been migrating around the planet since the evolution of the species. However, in most geographic locations, there is a dominant culture which relates to the ethnicity, languages, practices and beliefs of the majority of people residing there.
For many people the dominant culture is intrinsically nationalistic – impacting those who are visually different from the dominant culture. When some people, for example, think that ‘a true Australian’ can only be a white person, this has a very real impact on all people who look different. This can make existing in a country considered ‘home’ unpleasant, facing the ubiquitous question, “But where are you really from?”.
This nationalistic view extends beyond the nation of your passport and into other key personal identities such as religion, ‘a real American is a Christian,’ ‘a real Indian is Hindu’, etc. This non-acceptance of racial differences and the questioning of people’s right to their nationality is what leads to absurdities like the ‘Birther’ conspiracies, where President Barack Obama ultimately chose to release his birth certificate to prove his right to call himself American, and this was still not accepted by many in the country.
The difficulties that cross-cultural people face largely come from their monocultured counterparts. However, this is not unique to any specific monoculture. Cross-cultural people face these difficulties in any monoculture regardless of the race, ethnicity, or geographic location of that monoculture.
For instance, it is not uncommon for some transracial adoptees to be treated as an outsider not just in their adopted culture but also in their birth or ethnic culture, largely due to language barriers, cultural ignorance or lack of shared experiences and knowledge.
I believe there is great value in working with the cross-cultural model, even outside of TCK research where it is predominantly used. While each sub-group has its own unique experiences and issues, it is valuable to be united by our shared ‘outsider’ experience and reject the need to conform to any labels or identities that don’t fit, reflect, or serve us - particularly those imposed upon us by the monoculture.
Van Reken writes:
“Perhaps one of the greatest gifts to give a CCK is to acknowledge the reality that this world of multiple cultures they have experienced as children is a valid place of belonging, even if not rooted in one geographical place or ethnicity.”
As a cross-cultural person, I find myself feeling more and more confident in expressing my identity. Sometimes I say, “I’m adopted from Nepal, but I grew up overseas.” Sometimes I identify as a British Nepalese adoptee or just British, or Nepalese. I am all of these, all at once, and most people don’t need to know my family or life history upon meeting, and I am not obligated to tell them.
What we say, as cross-cultural people needs to be accepted by the wider population.
I used to feel a lot of pressure, both external and internal, to choose a side, or erase another. To fit myself more into the British ‘box’, to distance myself from my Nepalese heritage. To struggle through trying to be ‘more-British’ or to deny my ethnic heritage completely. I also know that one day, my answer to “Where are you from?” might still change and that’s okay too.
While I understand how unique personal identity is. On my own personal journey, freeing myself from a monocultured paradigm took a lot of weight of my shoulders.
The dominant group often ignores the concept of culture completely, as it is the norm in the country they reside. In many ways, they often do not realise they live within a culture; it is just considered ‘normal’ or ‘the way things are’. However, as I’ve written about before, anyone entering this new country might find themselves suddenly struggling with culture shock, feeling alienated by those around them and finding this affecting their mental health.
This affects adults as well as children. It can be incredibly difficult for someone who grew up as part of the dominant monoculture to suddenly find themselves in the position of an outsider in a new culture. They may experience a sense of aloneness that they have never before had to process.
While operating from a cross-cultural perspective will not solve the problems of culture shock or other difficult realities that cross-cultural people often face in terms of rejection and non-acceptance, I do propose it is ultimately a more inclusive model to work from.
For example, in this visual below when we ask someone "Where are you from?".
On the left-hand side, the dominant monoculture perspective may be that people from a certain place should only say they are from there if they have a passport from there/are citizens of the country—and, for some people, ideally also match the racial make-up of the majority population of the country.
On the right-hand side, the cross-cultural perspective allows people to define where they are from through multiple avenues, including ethnic origin, racial identity, passport country, citizenship, migration, travel, and more. It takes into account that where someone is from is often more than a tick-box exercise; rather, it can be nuanced and complex.
As global immigration continues to increase, cross-cultural populations are growing and becoming more and more common.
Recently, in a Facebook post thread, I read how important it was that a mixed-race and mixed-ethnic family taught their children that they are not ‘half of anything’ but ‘both’. Small changes like this can positively impact people’s self-concept. Conversely, asking someone “where they’re really from” to find out their ethnic heritage can negatively impact someone’s view of themselves, suggesting that where they identify as being from is somehow wrong.
I hope that this concept may be helpful to others to - both people from cross-cultural backgrounds and the people who interact with them, be it friends, family members or professionals.
https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2011/04/27/president-obamas-long-form-birth-certificate
https://www.crossculturalkid.org/who-are-cross-cultural-kids/
Third Culture Kids, Growing Up Among Worlds by David C. Pollock and Ruth E. Van Reken (2009)
