Third Culture Kids: The Co-Construction of Third Culture Identity

Includes bibliographical references (pages 44-46).Third Culture Kids (TCKs) are individuals who have spent a majority of their developmental years outside their passport countries. They do not have a physical place they call home due to the fact that they have grown up in a variety of cultural settings, usually accompanying their parents as they relocate to cities around the world because of their careers. Instead, TCKs discursively co-construct an abstract sense of home, also known as a ???third culture.??? Through narrative interviews, this study identifies a discursive sense-making process enacted by all members of such community. These narratives allowed a better understanding of how third culture kids recounted a TCK identity and how they discursively communicated a sense of home through a discursive sensemaking process. With globalization creating a more diverse and connected world, the number of TCKs globally has increased and will keep increasing over time Understanding how these individuals communicate is a first step into further acknowledging how and why such groups feel such marginalization as well as their processes of identifying with communities and how they view themselves