Day reading Passage (Australian culture and culture shock)

third culture kids (TCKs) - children who spend a significant portion of their developmental
years in a culture outside their parents’ passport culture(s) - is increasing exponentially.
Not only is their number increasing, but the cultural complexity and relevance of their
experience and the adult TCKs (ATCKs) they become, is also growing.
When Ruth Hill Useem, a sociologist, first coined this term in the 1950s, she spent a year
researching expatriates in India. She discovered that folks who came from their home
(or first) culture and moved to a host (or second) culture, had, in reality, formed a culture,
or lifestyle, different from either the first or second cultures. She called this the third
culture and the children who grew up in this lifestyle ‘third culture kids’. At that time, most
expatriate families had parents from the same culture and they often remained in one host
culture while overseas.
This is no longer the case. Take, for example, Brice Royer, the founder ofTCKid.com. His
father is a half-French/half-Vietnamese UN peacekeeper, while his mom is Ethiopian. Brice
lived in seven countries before he was eighteen including France, Mayotte, La Reunion,
Ethiopia, Egypt, Canada and England. He writes, ‘When people ask me “Where are you
from?” I just joke around and say, “My mom says I’m from heaven.”’ What other answer
can he give?
ATCK Elizabeth Dunbar’s father, Roy, moved from Jamaica to Britain as a young boy. Her
mother, Hortense, was born in Britain as the child of Jamaican immigrants who always
planned to repatriate ‘one day’. While Elizabeth began life in Britain, her dad’s international
career took the family to the United States, then to Venezuela and back to living in three
different cities in the U.S. She soon realised that while racial diversity may be recognised,