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This web site is dedicated to Swiss "Third Culture Kids" (Wikipedia, TCKs), and other TCKs from different nationalities, who, like me
have had difficulties in adapting to life in Geneva, and who do not
feel represented or recognized in any way in their particularities and
as a minority, which will inevitably grow with globalization.
There are official web sites for the Swiss
Abroad, but somehow I don't totally identify with this site's
philosophy, as they don't mention the difficulties some of us Swiss
TCKs (in my case Genevan) felt when we were brought back (I, for
one, kicking and screaming) to our "home country".
In some ways, our problems are similar to those of the immigrant
community's children, but not totally. Most of the swiss TCKs I know
do not come from a working class background, and for a lot of us, we
were totally cut off from our childhood friends, relations and
environment due to our parents "global
nomading". We are not an hours flight away from our past as
the expatriate working community is.
It's true that for the younger generation of
TCK's, the problem is much less acute than what we lived through
(50-80), as there is now internet, email and webcams to keep in touch.
Plane travel is much less expensive also.
Very strangely, for a supposedly
international city like Geneva, it's very difficult to find help
appropriate to our particular problems. Europeans have a fascination for
psychoanalysts who are people who seem to be stuck in Freud's time and
have difficulty integrating newly found scientific facts about human
psychology and anthropology. They desperately want to cram reality into
their theory, and don't have the intellectual honesty to try and prove
their founding premises scientifically.
We need people who are more like social
engineers, psychobiologists who would find ways to lessen trauma
caused by loss of childhood memories, odors, sounds, friends and social
customs. They could give courses to teach local customs and strategies
to help us integrate better into our "home" culture.
If you feel this concerns you, or,
if it doesn't but have some comment to make, please send an email to
me, Kenneth Grandchamp,
I would love to hear what you think about the subject..
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