The construction of cosmopolitan identifications among 'third culture kids' in two international schools

Abstract

This thesis looks at the life trajectories of serial migrants' children or 'Third Culture Kids' (TCKs) to explore how a transnational upbringing affects the homology between identity and place and leads to the construction of cosmopolitan identifications. Drawing on multi-sited ethnographic research in and around the communities of two International Baccalaureate (IBO) schools in Melbourne, Australia and in Singapore, this thesis details the everyday practices (eating, commuting, dwelling, leisure), forms of sociability (family and friendship ties and obligations, socialising and networking), and forms of identification (lifestyle choices, habitus and taste, self-representation) common among TCKs. Situated within the transnational migration literature, this project contributes to the empirical research on cosmopolitanism and on privileged migration. I explore the impact of high mobility and a transient upbringing on the construction of cosmopolitan identifications among my participants. Unlike traditional migration research that has examined migrants' relation to their 'home' or 'host' cultures, this thesis looks at TCKs' shared patterns of settlement rather than their points of departure or of arrival. By avoiding binary categories that oppose the 'local' to the 'global' and instead exploring the human face of skilled migration through the study of everyday life, this thesis sheds light on the myriad ways in which TCKs are enmeshed in complex webs of both local and global attachments and networks. Taking a comparative approach, I explore how the different cultural repertoires and political conjunctures present in each local context influence my participants' experience in two global cities. Through the investigation of international educational pathways and the spread of the discourse on internationalism, I observe how TCKs' identification is particularly marked by a discourse on distinction. I argue that in the current neoliberal socio-political landscape, global belonging can be experienced through membership in exclusive global middle-class transnational networks such as those that my research participants design and sustain. This research contributes to the theorisation on the emergence of post-national discourse and identification, while remaining attentive to the powerful and continuing impact of the nation-state as a dominant principle of social organisation. I argue that the construction of cosmopolitan identification is determined by the experience of difference, defined against the quotidian imperatives of ethnicity and national borders, which in turn are challenged by the emerging global culture of transnational migrants.