Welcome Home

By Angela

“Where are you from?”

“I’m Filipino, but…”

And there lies the qualification I always feel I need to include: Yes, I am Filipino because my passport says I am, and according to most people and government bodies that supposedly determines where you’re from. But it doesn’t feel that way for me.

In most cases, your nationality, where you grew up, and where you call home are usually the same place. But I’ve spent my whole life qualifying my answer to the fairly innocuous question of, “Where are you from?” because to me, my nationality, where I grew up, and where I call home are not the same place. I’m what you call a Third Culture Kid.

Third Culture Kids are children who grow up in a different culture and environment to their country of origin. Often the kids of diplomats, military personnel, and white collar expatriates, Third Culture Kids are usually raised in diverse communities where multiple nationalities co-exist and engage with one another. The deepening of globalization means we’re not rare, yet the term “Third Culture Kid” remains somewhat vague as diversity is part of parcel of this kind of upbringing. Even en masse, our experiences are often too distinctive to be meaningfully synthesized and engaged with as a whole. It requires many individual qualifications.

Let’s take my story: I was born and raised in Jakarta, Indonesia by Filipino parents. My father was one of those white collar expatriates and my mother dedicated her life to raising my brother and I. I was educated at an international school whose student body represented more than 60 nationalities, and in that diverse (and very privileged) bubble we were taught to engage with each other’s cultures through the lens of finding “unity in diversity”. Where you were from didn’t matter as much in terms of understanding who you were as a person, or indeed, where “home” was. After all, how does one identify as being from a certain place, one where others have a common culture and understanding of what it means to be from that place, if the culture(s) you and your peers identify with is spread across various places?

Personally, my upbringing was shaped by a culture that was distinctively American; a product of the heyday of neoliberal-fueled globalization and American ubiquity in the news. I sound American and English is my native language, but I grew up communicating in three because my parents spoke to me in Tagalog, and encouraged me to learn Indonesian as a form of respect to the country in which we were guests.

My adolescence was shaped by incredible experiences, such as my school taking us on a week-long field trip to a small island in Indonesia, only reachable by boat, to track a rare white rhino in the rainforest (?!). They could also take us for skiing trips to Switzerland, or to Egypt to see the pyramids. Despite being halfway across the world in a country most Westerners were told was a hotspot for terrorist attacks, I grew up watching The Disney Channel, Nickelodeon, TRL, and would go to the cinema every weekend to catch the latest Hollywood blockbuster. That Monday, I could be in French class watching Les Quatres Cents Coups in preparation for a discussion (in French) on how the film influenced art and society. I spent every weekend of my high school senior year drunk with friends, starting the night off sweating at an outdoor bar where we were served alcohol in buckets with straws. Then, we’d make our way to one of Jakarta’s bougie nightclubs to dance to Avicii till 3am while smoking indoors, at which point I’d leave to go home so my mum could open the front door and ensure I got into bed safely.

These experiences shaped my upbringing and world view, and I had the freedom, access, and privilege to pick and choose which aspects of different cultures defined who I was. In this environment, the question of, “Where are you from?” never needed a qualification. I was Filipino because I didn’t need to explain what that means. Growing up amongst my peers we all understood that we all came from some country of origin, but we also understood that as Third Culture Kids our lived experiences didn’t always align with what being from somewhere meant to the majority of the world. We were taught to embrace all the different parts of ourselves, confident this ability to adapt to your context would ensure we would always find a way to be a part of a certain crowd, group, place—whatever it may be.

Third Culture Kids are the product of globalization’s most utopian ideals, where someone’s identity is more strongly defined by what they’ve done, what they like, and what they’d like to do, rather than just the nationality stated on their passport, and the baggage that comes with it. But a quick look at the news headlines makes clear the world has diverged from that path; economic crises, the global war on terror, and now a pandemic—borders have never been more prominent in the governing of our society, and therefore a limitation to your place within it.

I will be the first to admit that my upbringing was one of immense privilege, and that for all its identity complications I would never want to have experienced anything different. But I—like many other Third Culture Kids—often struggle to find our place, a “home” we can clearly identify that would provide widely understood context for others to more easily put you in a box.

It is perhaps why for so much of my life, explaining my background (or what I am, as many confused acquaintances have asked) is a list of vague platitudes I’ve repeated over and over again, hoping these give others a general picture of “home” without actually having to define where or what “home” is. It is also why for much of my life I’ve likened my background to a hodgepodge of different cultural references; hoping that elements of my upbringing can be understood by these more widely-known fictional settings. Whether real or perceived, the non-traditional nature of how I was raised has instilled a certain feeling of otherness that has followed me throughout my life; a feeling of not quite fitting in anywhere despite being well-adjusted to any number of situations and surroundings.

An article I recently encountered put it nicely: “If asked, any Third Culture Kid will tell you that shape-shifting—rousing one of the many selves stacked within you to best suit the place you’re in—becomes a necessary survival skill, a sort of feigned fitting in that allows you to relate something of yourself to nearly everyone you meet.”

It is why as I got older, “home” became a concept defined practically by the city I lived and worked in. Given the trajectory of my life there was no plan—indeed, desire—to attempt to reconcile my “home” on paper with the physical place I’d come to live. Part of me simply wasn’t that interested in trying to officially call the Philippines “home”; another, more anxious part of me was scared that even if I did, that feeling of otherness would remain.

Having successfully dodged the need to confront this lifelong conundrum, all this changed 15 months ago when I moved to the Philippines to live and work; to come “home” to a place I’d never spent more than two weeks at a time for 26 years. Suddenly, this country and what it means to be Filipino were no longer foreign concepts I could avoid. My arrival coincided with the need to confront what that means, in the midst of a global pandemic where the opportunity to discover has been severely limited.

I’ve spent my whole life feeling somewhat out of place in any country I live in, and this feeling has continued despite me living in the place and community I supposedly truly “belong” to. Most of the time I can go about my business anonymously; falling into the crowd of fellow Filipinos just as I would in any other city. But things change when a social interaction—however brief—is required.

The last 15 months have shown me that I am on the advantageous end of a post-colonial legacy, where reverence for the West lingers in interactions with those perceived as hailing from that side of the world. And the longer I spend here, the more I recognise I am complicit in many of the problems that contribute to the inequity of Filipino society. Any new interactions have been shaped by an assumed Westernness; the twang of my American accent ringing in every spoken syllable. The advantages I gain from sounding the way I do makes my life easier—people are generally more attentive, and I am aware of the imbalance of power that benefits me as a result of my embodying what many locals perceive to be somehow “better” than an average born and bred Filipino. To communicate in what is supposed to be my mother tongue has always been a source of anxiety, but I’ve also come to acknowledge that part of my inability to integrate stems from my own internalized racism about my upbringing and how it differentiates me to others.

There is no clean resolution. Though I’d love to say that acknowledging the biases I have would help with changing my perspective and experience, I’ve come to recognize this feeling of otherness has also become my safety blanket; one I comfortably slip on to avoid trying to define where “home” is, and indeed, where I fit in. Many with my background have an adopted home; some accept that “home” is not defined by a physical space, while others find people who make somewhere a home for them. I’ve yet to figure out where exactly I fall on that spectrum, but I’ve also become a lot less maudlin about it.

The other day I while I was sitting for my tattoo artist, we got to chatting. As we engaged in small talk she eventually asked: “Where are you from?”

When I said I was Filipino, she asked where I grew up. And from there came a few clarification questions of whether I was Indonesian, why I grew up in Jakarta, where my parents are from, and a repeat of, “So where are you from?” I explained again and laughed, because in that moment I was reminded of a little game I used to play.

Growing up I could always spot a fellow Filipino. I think we all can recognize when someone comes from the same country as us (though don’t ask me to explain how), and it becomes easier if you happen to strike a conversation with them. But I used to play this game often when I lived in other places; to find fellow foreigners who were my countrymen, and perhaps to try and find some form of connection to the country of my origin. When I was younger I assumed that recognition by a mere gaze was always mutual and that for every Filipino I recognized, they’d see the same reflected in me if I happened to capture their glance.

So, while I was laying there doing my best to stay still, I laughed because I’ve been asked the same question here in Manila, as much as any foreign country I’ve lived in, by fellow Filipinos: “Where are you from?”

Resource: 

Brara, Noor. “Finding a Place for Third-Culture Kids in the Culture.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 11 Sept. 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/09/11/t-magazine/luca-guadagnino-third-culture-kids.html.