In December, the MigrantKnowledge blog hosted a post I wrote about Third Cultures and how they are important similarities as well as differences between the experiences of Third Culture Kids (TCKs), often relatively privileged migrants’ children with the explicit expectation to locate “back” to an origin country after a specific amount of time, and migrants that might move for less privileged economic reasons, or even political and other emergency reasons. There are important questions to be asked about the extent to which TCKs are, or not, a specific migrant group. In the extensive literature review we are conducting on third cultures for this project, we have found many responses to this, including those that are very critical of speaking of TCKs as a specific migrant group (see e.g. Saija Benjamin and Fred Dervin’s book). However, what I reflect on in the post is that the “third cultures” that emerge from contact between different cultures, can emerge for any person, whatever their history of migration or contact with migrants in some shape or form. And that perhaps these third cultures, while making identity construction a struggle for many, can be inspiring for allowing for a culturally complex view of the world, and perhaps even creative solutions for daily topics. Such creativity and complex thinking is far from a given when one has access to a third culture – but it is something that, when reflected on actively, holds much potential.

Here is the link to the post on MigrantKnowledge: https://migrantknowledge.org/2024/12/16/third-cultures-the-cursed-gold-of-migrants/