Betwixt and Between

Image: Aaditi Lele

Pluck a puzzle piece from its set and try to fit it in another puzzle. You can try to twist it and mangle it, but it will never fit just right in a space it never belonged. Now, try fitting it back into its rightful place, where it first began. It’s changed too much to fit there either. You leave it strewn on the floor, alone. 

TCK: |noun| third culture kid, the puzzle piece you left on the floor. 

For immigrant youth growing up in the U.S., cultural identities are blurry and a sense of belonging unreachable. Having moved here at a young age, we try to adapt to our new surroundings, changing ourselves to fit into this new puzzle. But, we can never be completely American. The thought of returning to our roots is just as scary because we have modified ourselves too much to fit in there either. Where do we belong? We belong to a third culture, suspended in limbo.

Confusion seems to be the only constant. One foot in one place and one in another, stuck in between. Bits and pieces of both worlds but the entirety of neither: betwixt and between.

Though further proliferated by contemporary globalization, TCKs are no new phenomenon. The term was coined by American sociologist and anthropologist Dr. Ruth Hill Useem to convey the cultural identities of children who were brought up away from their home country in host nations around the world. Dr. Useem’s pioneering research in the 1960s continues to apply to immigrant youth in the U.S. today.

Dr. Useem described the term “Third Culture Kid” as referring “to the children who accompany their parents into another society.” These kids grow up in a foreign place, try to assimilate there and upon returning to their home country, find themselves too altered to fit in. Her research conveyed the same sentiments we face today: no sense of belonging to either culture. In one of Useem’s interviews, an American TCK explained how she was “a partial outsider” in her host country but “living with only a split part of her personality” in her home country. The same testimonies are so common today that Spanish-speaking immigrants have popularized the phrase “ni de aqui, ni de allá [neither here, nor there]” to convey the same identity crisis. 

It might be hard to imagine that someone could so simply lose their culture. But, it is only natural for kids to spend their formative years trying to fit in and that manifests in us shedding the culture of our home countries in order to conform. We try to change what we eat, how we talk, how we dress, and how we behave just to fit in. We spend our entire childhoods trying so hard to be American and still fall short. But the hardest part is realizing that we can’t even fall back on our roots because by the time we realize what we’ve lost, it is too late to go back. This lack of clear cultural identity has palpable impacts on TCKs and ATCKs, adult third culture kids. A 2011 study even found that “As these children of immigrants are caught in between the American culture and the culture of their parents, their self-identity is more difficult to establish, therefore putting them at a higher risk for mental health issues.” Without a dominant cultural influence, we are left to establish a self-identity on our own, giving way to these mental health impacts. Upon acknowledging what we’ve lost, we can move onto to the arduous task of self-determining our complex identities. 

So, contrary to how it may appear, a multicultural identity isn’t as rose-colored as having the “best of both worlds.” To grasp a part of one world you have to let go of a part of another and striking a balance isn’t as easy as it seems. Even as we aim to find that balance between American culture and that of our parents, it is rarely perfectly attained. Suspended in a cultural limbo, we are neither here nor there, neither American nor the same as our parents, living on bits and pieces of both without the entirety of either. And even though it may take us a bit longer to find our identities, we can still embrace being the puzzle pieces that don’t seem to fit in any singular space.