BIOGRAPHICAL CONSEQUENCES OF INTERNATIONAL MOBILITY IN CHILDHOOD: THE CASE OF THIRD CULTURE KIDS

This article concernes Third Culture Kids (TCKs), i.e. persons, who due their parents’ work spent a significant period of their childhood or school years in a different country than that of their parents. Due to the fact that in today’s globalizing world more and more people experience working abroad and many of them are accompanied by their families, the issue of the consequences of such a mobile and multicultural childhood becomes extremely important. The author has conducted 53 biographical interviews with adult Third Culture Kids. The biographical consequences of moving in one’s childhood are analyzed in a few spheres: professional life, social relations, psychological problems, and identity construction. TCKs are most often from the families of diplomats, professionals working abroad on contracts, employees of international firms. The vast majority of them has tertiary education and chooses a career which gives independence, the possibility to travel and capitalize cultural competences, which one has acquired thanks to his or her upbringing. Unfortunately, such a lifestyle since childhood is associated with the risk of psychological (ranging from the lack of embeddedness to depression) and social (e.g. sense of alienation, difficulties in engaging in deeper relations) problems. Building a coherent and long-lasting identity is also a challenge for Third Culture Kids. The author describes means of dealing with the above-mentioned problems