Are you a Third Culture Kid?
Are you raising a TCK?
We want to hear your story.
“Where is Home?” is a documentary about Third Culture Kids. TCKs are children who have been raised in countries and cultures different from the ones of their parents’ passports.
The questions we ask are:
How do these mothers raise their kids? How do these mothers find balance in their own life? How do they create the sense of roots and home in their kids mind when they have to travel every few years and leave everything behind? How do they deal with loss? What effect does that have to the girls they are raising? What does that mean for the world of tomorrow?
We interview Singaporeans who have traveled the world and expats living in Singapore.
There is a very interesting article by Kate Mayberry from the BBC, where she talks about TCKs. Ms. Mayberry describes what happens to children at the end of their time at Garden International School in Kuala Lumpur. They receive a kit with a sour sweet, a length of ribbon, a paper clip, a sponge and a rubber band. These items are chose to prompt a discussion about what leaving means - bittersweet emotions, tying up loose ends, making memories. Every departing child is also recognised during school assembly. This way the school explains to them how important it is to say good bye. Just for Garden International School, 65% of its students have come from countries outside Malaysia and for many that is not their first experience living overseas.
“Third Culture Kids” 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. Globalisation has made TCKs more common; and with the rates of globalisation growth, TCKs will become more and more in the years to come.
TCKs are mostly children of expatriate workers, but they can come from transnational marriages or - as very commonly in Asia - attend an International school in their home country.