Exploring decolonial resistance in the transition narratives of Third Culture Individuals

• In Event: Globalisation and Citizenship

Proposal

This case study explores the CIES 2024 theme of protest in its relationality to resistance. I examine how Third Culture Individuals both conform to and resist academic definitions. Over concern for categorizing individuals’ personal senses of self, I suggest we use the theoretical/ methodological approaches of narrative inquiry to develop the pedagogical possibilities for criticality in the teaching of TCIs and international students.

I employ methods of narrative inquiry (Reyes et al. 2021; Mertova and Webster 2020) and qualitative mixed-methods research (Hesse-Biber, 2010). In answering the call by Leigh Patel (2016) to maintain research as a fundamentally relational project, I interviewed 9 alumni of a Panamanian international school to capture their stories of the transitions to higher education. Through the facilitation of reflexive, generative interviews and subsequent thematic coding and frequency analysis, I posed the following research questions:

How do alumni of international schools story their experience of moving from one context to another across national and cultural borders?

How do the descriptions/language in these stories of transition interact with academic definitions of third-culture individuals?

Distinct from those who grow up in the same place over the course of their childhood, Third Culture Kids (TCKs) usually have multiple understandings of “home” (Pollock & Van Reken 2017; Grimshaw & Sears 2008). Moore and Barker (2012) suggest that Third Culture Individuals (TCIs) blend their home and host culture to achieve the label of third culture. They are often multilingual and characterized as having attended an international school, which can also be seen as the third space itself.

As a historically colonized epicenter, Panama is a third space nation of diverse heritages. The identities of TCIs from Panama are complex and drawn into zones inextricably tied with the Colonial Matrix of Power (CMP), such as international schools. Many TCIs are generational descendants of former colonized nations in the Global South. Engaging in research with the TCI becomes a relevant space to consider theories of decoloniality. Attempts to homogenize TCI experiences in Western academic knowledge production denies locational knowledge, even when that location is tied up in blended encounters.

Decoloniality hinges on the rights of the individual to determine their self as it interacts with their knowledge, history, and being. Within a decolonial frame, storylistening and deep engagement with narrative provides an opportunity to exercise “delinking” from presumptions about identity and a movement in our academic research endeavors towards “epistemic and aesthetic (subjectivity, sensing, emotioning) reconstitution” (Mignolo, 2020, p. 616). Drawing on dialogue with TCIs, whose identities are tied up in the international school experience - at once a colonial enterprise - and their own heritages, means contemplating relationality with the encounters experienced in their narratives.

The findings showcase the participants wanting to beat back attempts to essentialize their sense of national belonging. Olivia is of Mexican descent who has lived in China, Mexico, Brazil, and Panama and now lives in Amsterdam where she is attending university. Olivia underscores national un-belonging is not a comfort to be enjoyed but a frightful experience shared among her TCI peers. While she does reject the notion of being able to move back to her claimed nation of heritage, Olivia does not reject the desire to engage with and find that sense of belonging.

Alex is Indian by heritage but born and raised in Panama. They are also a first-generation college student attending university in Chicago. Alex’s narrative rejects claims of privilege in having challenges with visas and establishing a college identity, causing discomfort and feelings of insecurity. Instead of employing conclusive rhetoric to determine the “privilege” of an identity, how might we leverage this narrative to help students position themselves for success in honoring their lived experiences? Considering these queries, I explored the frequencies of coded narratives by their interactions with traits such as culture shock during transition to varying degrees. Out of 95 segments of narrative, participants experienced low levels of culture shock 59% of the time and higher levels of culture shock 41% of the time. These findings suggest that “frequent” experiences of culture shock are present in transitional spaces for TCIs, but are not as dominant as scholarship suggests.

Oscar made a point to reflect back on the context of Panama and what it meant to be an immigrant in the Canal Zone and interact with the sociocultural dynamics of the community. Participants found that their TCI background both served to facilitate and challenge their interactions in new spaces and encounters in the Global North. While their TCI backgrounds challenged their communication literacies in new contexts a little over 50% of the time, almost just as frequently it facilitated their communication in new spaces. These findings explain how the narratives enunciate (Gaztambide-Fernández, 2014) the complexity of TCI identities, insisting that boxing them into dominant perspectives serves to limit their potential for learning.

Instead of centering our research on applying labels to the human experience, the stories of these participants might aid researchers to consider implications of what it means to listen to and engage with the individual, to situate the tensions between how TCIs make sense of their own identities and commitments to their ever-changing figured/literal worlds. TCI insights could serve as instructional for international school educators and university instructors in teaching from a decentralized perspective, one that explores multiplicity beyond singular senses of nationhood. Narrative inquiry as a method can inform approaches to designing curriculum and learning for TCIs, as determined by them. I encourage educators to participate in critical conversations with their students and engage with TCI’s own reflections and writing. It is vital that we also extend empathy in our equity teaching in avoiding presumptions around the privilege of TCIs as hegemonic and singular. It is through the dialogic listening and consideration of their voices that educators can implement narrative as a more regular practice in various subject areas to support TCIs in their formative years.

Author

• Jillian Kneeland, University of Colorado Boulder