Multi-Cultural Identity - crisis to

Bill's Take- Aways from 

“Raising Global Nomads” by Robin Pascoe © 2006 

Raising our family abroad has had significant challenges as we've tried to adapt to 'back home' every few years.  Robin Pascoe's insights are great. I highly recommend this one!  I found this very useful when interacting with 3 of our children who've returned to the US after 15+ years abroad.

 Profile of a Global Nomad            page 17ff

1. Alert, intelligent and geographically aware
2. Mature, sensitive and skilled at listening
3. Likely to exhibit tolerance and cross-cultural understanding
4. Flexible and open to change
5. High Achieving
6. Drawn to careers associated with service to the community or the world

Challenges for the Global Nomad  pg 21ff

·        The oversees experience makes them feel different

·        They gravitate to others like themselves

·        Issues of adolescence and rebellion are delayed

·        A migratory instinct can take hold

·        Feel rootless and restless, as if they don’t belong anywhere

·        Have issues of unresolved grief

Someone is always leaving – a best friend or a favorite teacher – and grief can be experienced even when children leave a place they didn’t particularly enjoy; at least it had become familiar and comfortable 

“The move can upset how the family relates to one another. As in any crisis, it takes time for a family to re-stabilize. An more than just time, honest communication with one another, flexibility, and the ability to sit back and laugh about it will be very helpful.”   Pg 61

I feel there is a greater sense of loss and disorientation for children when they move. page 63

 Stages of ID Development  - Being and Becoming   Pg 215ff

1.      Pre-encounter – before identity exploration begins –  Global Nomads are just living their internationally mobile lives, not thinking about how those lives are shaping who they are.  Yet it’s their experiences during this time that ultimately fuel their search for identity congruence. 

2.      Encounter – wakes up to the fact that they are different from others specifically because of growing up globally. Forces self-reflection, become curious about who we are and how and why we move through the world as we do. “When we went back to __________, which I’d always thought of as home, but when I got there, I realized it was Mars.”

3.      Exploration ‘national identity’ “What does it mean to me to be a citizen of this country on whose passport I travel?” How do my worldview and values differ from or run parallel to those of my homegrown peers?  Repatriation is so typically an identity encounter experience, and that’s why national identity is so typically a key ingredient in the Global Nomads’ identity exploration.” This can be a prolonged time of figuring things out.

It’s really “ok to be BOTH/AND rather than EITHER/OR”
when it comes to culture identity.So, it’s ok to tell folks,
[adapted from what she wrote]

I’m a TCK – having grown up in India and now in the US. 

I’m American with an overlay of international interests, experience,expertise and allegiance.

4.      Integration – A place of congruence. We understand who we are in terms of our intentionally mobile lives: how those lives have influenced us, shaped us, and directed our interests and talents.

Cultural maraginality… is the experience typical of people who have been molded by exposure to two or more cultural traditions; they are on the cultural margins, rather than in the mainstream, of each of the cultures that influenced them.  They are people who have considered why they’re different and are comfortable with being so. Indeed, they are grateful for it; they use their difference to strengthen their competence and to maximize their personal success. While they may not feel fully at home, you may feel somewhat at home everywhere – a very important distinction.

The transition from exploration to integration may be very gradual. One day something may remind us of our mobile childhoods, and we realize that we haven’t talked about it recently or reflected lately on its influence on our lives. It’s typically with this kind of hindsight that we understand we’ve completed the exploration our encounter experience sets in motion.

    5.      Identity Recycling: someday the global nomad will have another encounter to do with growing up globally….it will be sufficiently ‘awakening’ that once again she’ll find herself reflecting on how her nationally mobile childhood has influenced her. She’ll again engage in identity exploration, and again move through identity integration.