Third culture kids negotiating identities in an international school in Thailand

The following Master's thesis discusses research on cultural identity negotiation of Third Culture Kids (TCKs) attending an international school in Bangkok, Thailand. Postcolonial theory, primarily Said’s (1978; 1994) theory of Orientalism, and Bourdieu’s (1993; 2003) theories of symbolic capital, symbolic power, and fields of cultural production are central to this study. The ethnographic approach of this research focuses on eight TCK participants, who have at least one non-Western primary culture of home, and who negotiate dominant local and globalized cultures of the school into their identity. Highlights on primary and secondary cultural identities, and the varying symbolic capital that discourses of different cultures offer are provided through the focus on the relationship between marginalized and hegemonic cultures present in the international school setting. The research aims to further an understanding of more socially just cultural and educational frames of curricular education in international schools