“Like lots of you, I have huge problems communicating with people… the people I find it hardest to communicate with are those close to me, especially my parents. I find that with a complete stranger, I can rattle off my experiences without any thought to their rapidly changing view of me, and without feeling that I have to pick up their jaws off the floor, clean their ears and wave my hand in front of their face, waiting for them to come back. I also don’t have to then make their lives sound interesting to me (who wants to live in the same town for 90 years and the most exciting thing that happened in their life was something that happened to someone they knew…. ten years ago??).”
Kayla Zephyrin, “A westerly wind”, blog post on tckid.com [i]
TCKs are not considered to be a diasporic community although with the development of the related subculture(s), largely thanks to the internet, you could argue otherwise. TCKs would not be a diaspora community traditionally speaking, however some of their idiosyncratic traits as a group lead them to adopt some similar attitudes as members of a diaspora community. As Norma McCaig wrote “TCK children often feel and function like hidden immigrants when they reach home shores.”[ii]
http://www.tckid.com/group/your-english-is-good-tck-comic/ [iii]
This may manifest itself in the form of language, as Kayla said about herself on tckid.com “I say one sentence and it has several different languages in it–some of which I’ve never studied.” Another language example is when someone is using a word in a different idiomatic way then its actual use in a given language. A story Pollock relates to is of a TCK using the word sorry in English with its Kenyan connotation. “Pole, pole sana” in Kenya which translates to “Sorry, very sorry” in English is as much an apology as an expression of sympathy. English-speakers couldn’t understand why the TCK kept apologizing for everything until they realized the way she was using sorry was culturally imbibed with the meaning it has in East African cultures. [iv]
On the other hand, studies such as the one conducted by Cottrell and Useem point out that TCKs tend to relate a lot more to a diversity of people or other TCKs than with people they share the same nationality with. This may mean that TCKs will feel different but not necessarily isolated as they usually have acquired strong social and interpersonal skills thanks to their exposure to many different social situations. [v]
While diaspora kids may suffer of alienation in a new country and their communities maintain cultural tradition such as the Trinidadian carnival to preserve their link with the homeland, third culture kids will suffer of not being like their own and rather break with the homeland to better integrate where they live. But in both cases, they are the first generation to a better intercultural understanding of each other.
[i] “a westerly wind : tckid.” 26 Nov. 2007 <http://www.tckid.com/group/a-westerly-wind/>
[ii] McCaig, Norma (1994). Growing up with a world view – nomad children develop multicultural skills. Foreign Service Journal, pp. 35.
[iii] “Your English is Good TCK Comic : tckid.” 26 Nov. 2007 <http://www.tckid.com/group/your-english-is-good-tck-comic/>
[iv] Pollock D. C. and Van Reken R. Third Culture Kids. The Experience of Growing Up Among Worlds (Yarmouth Maine, Intercultural Press 1999), 115-116.
[v] Cottrell AB, Useem RH (1994). “ATCKs have problems relating to own ethnic groups”. International Schools Services, 8(4).
