For new community members or friends making new discoveries about their identities, it can be overwhelming to navigate all the different terms, phrases, and ideas that emerge from discussing the TCK experience. For others who are more familiar with talking about their experiences, it helps to be re-acquainted with these terms.

Here are a list of the Top 10 Third Culture Kid glossary terms to guide you through some of the basic words and concepts.

1) Third culture kid (TCK) – Dr. David Pollock, a sociologist and co-author of Third Culture Kids: The Experience of Growing Up Among Worlds, defines a TCK as “a person who has spent a significant part of his or her developmental years outside the parents’ culture. The TCK builds relationships to all of the cultures, while not having full ownership of any. Although elements from each culture are assimilated into the TCK’s life experience, the sense of belonging is in relationship to others of a similar background.” This has traditionally included those who have grown up in more than one country.

Other terms for TCK include: global nomad; trans-culture kid; expat brat

Types of TCKs include:

a) Army/Military brats – A TCK with at least one parent working in his/her passport country’s military and who has moved lived in military bases.

b) Missionary Kids – A TCK with at least one parent working as a missionary for a religious institution and who has moved as part of missionary work.

c) Diplobrats – A TCK with at least one parent working in a diplomatic capacity, such as part of a government organization or embassy, and who has moved as part of diplomatic work.

d) Business brats – A TCK with at least one parent working in a multinational organization and who has moved as part of a business assignment.

2) Adult Third Culture Kid (ATCK) – A TCK who is of adult age. An ATCK experiences adulthood with his/her TCK perspective.

3) Cross Cultural Kid (CCK) – Like TCKs, a CCK is a person who has spent a significant part of his/her developmental years outside of the parents’ cultures. CCKs include persons who have grown up in one country but within multiple cultural settings.

4) Unresolved grief – An emotional state felt as a reaction to loss of ties to a place or places where a TCK once lived. This feeling is exacerbated when the feelings of loss are not acknowledged or when there are no efforts toward reconnection, such as through communication or visits.

5) Itchy feet – The feeling characterized by restlessness and a desire to change locations. Many TCKs have expressed feeling this way after they have settled in one place.

6) Culture shock – An emotional state felt when reacting and adjusting to a new cultural setting. A person who moves to a new city or country may feel this after he or she first arrives.

7) Reverse culture shock – An emotional state felt when adjusting to a previously experienced cultural setting, which is often a person’s “home” culture.

Expatriate (also, Expat) – A person who resides in a place outside his/her usual place of residence or legal residence. A family who is sent on assignment away from its passport country are considered expatriates.

9) Repatriate – A person who returns to his/her usual place of residence or legal residence. A family who returns to its passport country after a foreign assignment are considered repatriates.

10) Global citizen – This is a term used by many TCKs who do not feel any affinity to any particular country or cultural setting, particularly in response to the question, “Where are you from?” Instead of using the citizenship listed in one’s passport, a TCK may just say that they are a global citizen.

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One of the main characteristics that has defined the US over its history is immigration. Starting with just a few states on the east coast and expanding across the continent, immigration has provided the manpower to keep the biggest economy in the world going and growing.

It has, largely, been a white man’s country through history. European immigrants dominated the early country, and the various nationalities generally blended together. It got race focused, first as slavery became an issue, then after the Mexican War saw large populations of hispanic peoples. Native populations also saw the short stick… and arguably still do.

The important thing about America though, was that anyone coming, would ostensibly be American, as soon as their citizenship was recognized. The only thing they ask is your loyalty.

What they do have unique is the ability to tell the world: “If you want to come, come on over, we don’t care where you’re from.”

This is a bit different in practice. Subconsciously, there were always people who were “more American than others”. When there were only European immigrants, the Irish were the lowest on the rung. And as time went on, people could collectively pick on any other immigrants which were sufficiently new and different.

However, that lack of a specific national culture makes it unique, particularly today when immigration is fairly common in developed countries.

Unlike Europe, the USA has no specific, long-established national-ethnic culture. They’ve tried in a way to make one, and in a way it has… but in 20 years, “white people” will probably be just another minority. There’s obviously some resistance to this from people who might feel that America is traditionally white.

But what I think is that the US really does have a unique opportunity here to become that country of all countries. They don’t have the same culturally and ethnically specific nation-identity that many other countries do.

In Europe, assimilation can be difficult because people know damn well what being German, Italian, or Spanish means. They’ve had hundreds of years knowing it to be somewhat consistent. Immigrants *can* assimilate, as is generally the case in France, but even then there, there’s resistance because deep down in every Frenchman’s heart is the nagging suspicion that real Frenchmen were always white down the centuries. You can be French-Algerian, French-Moroccan and so on, but to be really French, it would seem that your family had to have lived there for a great many generations. There’s a defined ethno-culture there. But the US has a fairly unique opportunity to say “Hey, technically, we’ve never had a tradition of it.” After all, the US is a nation of immigrants. Probably there are a bunch of people who can trace their family back to the Revolution, but most people have come from somewhere else, by this point. And everyone who’s been there for a generation or two seems to want to say “Hey, I’ve been here for a while too. I deserve a say in what happens.”

The political and social system is generally designed to be open to this. Anyone can run for government office, and anyone can open a business if they have the money. Anyone should be able to get a job, and so on, and so on. In practice it doesn’t always work.

America’s race problems could be interpreted as a product of that fear and constant competition for the top. The “Chinese Exclusion Act” was probably the only government law that was racially specific, and it was in place for 50-60 years, stunting their assimilation into American ‘culture’. (This is one of things not all that many people know. It is even today the only official government document which is nationally discriminatory. Aren’t you glad you read this?)

Some people like to say “America has no culture, unless it’s T-shirts, hamburgers and hotdogs” and similar superficialties, and this would at least be partially wrong. But now that I think of it, it’s possible that this very lack of history may be a virtue, not a failure. In fact, if it works at its best, America can say “Maybe we don’t have a specific one, but we have all of yours” to the world.

The United States is not the only democracy in the world, anymore. It might have been the first (since Athens) and had a style different to English Parliament, Swiss Community Vote, or Iroquois confederacy, but it no longer can simply say how free it is to define its qualities. A lot of places are “free” by their definition now.

What they do have unique is the ability to tell the world: “If you want to come, come on over, we don’t care where you’re from.” It’s in their capacity to represent everyone, to themselves, if they so will it.

There are emails sent around which try to scare people, saying “Soon, there will be enough Muslims to elect the president!” but this is not a bad thing. Think what a difference a Muslim president would have had on dealings with Muslim countries. It’s already a big thing that Obama is half-black, so just imagine the possibilities. And it’s within the American legal system to do this.

All there is in the way is a rather unfounded perception that to be really American you have to be white, or possibly black. There’s so much more potential than that. What stops this? Old, stubborn people who feel that their being there for longer makes them more American.

I don’t entirely believe that one has to love baseball, eat hamburgers, and watch so much TV they know pop culture inside and out, to be American. I don’t feel that their national cultural definition is even as specific as that. The Oath and Pledge of Allegiance simply ask for loyalty. That’s all it legally needs to be American. Maybe it’s time that people realized it.

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