We Are The Rootless Ones-2015 update
In 2015, Robin Dormer (LGB, 1969) revisited an article he wrote in 1979.
Thirty-six years ago—ten years after graduating from Ecolint in 1969—I wrote an article for the Alumni Newsletter. It was called "We Are The Rootless Ones". Our charming (and highly persuasive) new Alumni Officer has asked me to revisit the theme: what do I think about it now, so many years later?
The point of my article was that many who attend Ecolint (and, by extension, many who live “abroad” in their formative years), and then return to their “home” country, find that on return they do not feel that they belong in their “home” country, which does not feel like “home” after all, and falls short of their expectations; this, in turn, is disconcerting and alienating (albeit, of course, in different degrees for different people). I suggested that Ecolint be aware of this phenomenon and try to prepare students for it so that it is less of a shock when it happens.
The article generated quite a lot of reaction when it appeared—I was quite surprised (and rather gratified). Although, of course, some people had not experienced what I described, many recognised it. The article seems to have touched a nerve. Over the years this article seems to have got under the Ecolint skin. Bob Rae (LGB, 1966) referred to it in his address to the 1994 Ecolint Alumni World Reunion. I am constantly reminded of it by Ecolint alumni when I meet them.
When I wrote the article I had never read anything on the subject-matter. In fact, I doubt that there was very much then, though (as I know now) there was a little. But I have read a lot since. It turns out that over the intervening years, we have become a well-known phenomenon. We have a label: we are called “Third Culture Kids” or TCKs. There is an article about us on Wikipedia. There are serious books about us1. There are academic articles (some of them cite my very non-academic one).2
Rootless Ones
We must be careful to distinguish between a number of closely related phenomena, which have many features in common. The one I was specifically addressing has been described above. It is not quite the same as simply living “abroad”, where one may also experience dislocation or culture shock (the dislocation or culture shock which I described is that experienced when returning “home” from abroad). It is also not quite the same as exile, about which many have written eloquently—notably, in my view, Edward Said and particularly André Aciman, to whom I shall return. Nor is it quite the same as the experience of moving around a great deal, even within one’s “own” country. But all of these can have profound effects, similar to those experienced by us Rootless Ones, and these experiences can inform our own.
Alvaro de Soto (LGB,1960) took the notion of “coming home” as the theme of his own address to the 2009 Ecolint Alumni World Reunion. I was particularly struck by his remarks.3 He asked where was “home” for us, and concluded that “home” was not a particular place, but rather a state of understanding which we all share—our “home” is our shared experience and our knowledge of others with that shared experience. Quoting from his notes—
“this group of people was, in an indefinable, elusive way, home: not built of bricks or straw or wood or zinc plates or wicker—an immaterial web composed of the network of people with whom I had grown up.”
He has, in my view, put his finger on it. We are “at home” when we are with such others, or in the realisation that there are such others; but our home is, essentially, one that exists only in the mind. But it is nonetheless real for that.
I find solace in André Aciman’s writing; and he has put a similar notion rather well, I think, in a slightly different context: that of exile and nostalgia. What I am talking about is not exile, or nostalgia (though perhaps there is a whiff of that); but he speaks of—
“Ulysses, who realizes in fact that nostalgia is not some sort of restless energy that propels him homeward, but that nostalgia is his home, the way that, in exile, only paradox makes sense. He finds his home in the purely intellectual realization that he has no home. The site of nostalgia is nostalgia itself.” 4
"You all say the same things"
I was also struck when being interviewed for the purpose of an academic article on this subject (the one mentioned in footnote 2): the interviewer had a list of standard questions, which she was putting to a number of people who had lived abroad and had then returned “home” to what I now know is described as one’s “passport country”. After a few questions and answers, she started to smile. I did not think I had said anything particularly amusing, so I asked her why she was smiling. “You all say the same things” was her answer.
In my article, I referred to the late Robert J. Leach, former history teacher at Ecolint, who said (paraphrasing) that an international school student should feel “at home” everywhere.5 I said that in my view the international school student does not actually feel quite “at home” anywhere. I was reminded of this by André Aciman—
“... I myself had gone to English schools throughout my childhood and hence knew English better than French—so that, if my mother tongue was French, I still spoke it with a strange accent. (This was part of my problem all around; I spoke several languages with a French accent, except French.)” 6
Well then, where does all this leave me after such a long time? Would I write the same article now?
One thing I should certainly not do now is phrase the article in such non-gender-neutral language. In 1979 this was common; now it makes me cringe.
As to the substance, I do not think I should change a thing, at least so far as it describes my own experience. Perhaps I should not use quite the same examples today as I used then (I suspect few worry these days about how public telephones work), but other examples could easily be found. I still think and feel now what I described then; if anything, this has been reinforced by what I have heard from other Ecolint alumni. In 1979 I wondered if I was the only one. Now I know that I am one of many: it has been a sort of coming-out experience. What I described never did affect everybody; and those it affects are not all affected adversely. But those whom it does affect are all conscious of it. It is something that requires adaptation, but I think I have reached an accommodation with it. Knowing that I am one of many is strangely comforting. But it is still hard to answer questions such as “where are you from?”.
Today's students?
What I do not know, however, is whether students leaving Ecolint and returning “home” now feel at all the same way as I (and many others) did then. Could my 1979 article be written today? Is Ecolint more attuned to all this now, so that it can better prepare its students? Have globalisation and the internet resulted in “home” and “belonging” and “passport country” having less meaning now than 36 years ago? I do not know. It would be interesting to find out.
Speaking for myself, decades after 1979, I have now lived longer in London than anywhere else, and longer at my current address than at any other; and yet London, and England, are still not “home”. By contrast, I still feel, on landing at Cointrin or arriving at Cornavin or seeing the distinctive silhouette of the Salève, that at a very fundamental level je suis chez moi. But, of course, I do not belong there. As I said in 1979, an Ecolint student knows how to be a foreigner: being a foreigner is a role which comes naturally to us all. We are foreigners everywhere, including our passport country; and “at home” in some other space which exists only in the mind, and among those who have shared our special experience—which, despite the resulting rootlessness, has been infinitely enriching. I would still not exchange that experience for anything in the world.
Robin Dormer
LGB '69
1. An example is The Third Culture Kid Experience, by David C. Pollock and Ruth E. Van Reken (1999). [newer edition available]
2. See, for example, Fail, Thompson and Walker, ‘Belonging, Identity and Third Culture Kids’, Journal of Research in International Education 2004, Vol. 3(3), p. 319. Disclosure: in that article I am “Richard”.
3. I gratefully acknowledge Alvaro’s help: he found, and sent me, the notes for his speech, and he has seen a draft of this article (though he bears no responsibility for it).
4. André Aciman, ‘Pensione Eolo’, in False Papers: Essays on Exile and Memory (2000).
5. “... it would seem reasonable to stress those elements [of an education] which affirm the solidarity of mankind as an entity in such a way that the one-time international school students will find themselves ‘at home’ in all cultures and human situations.” Leach, International Schools and their Role in the Field of International Education (1969), pp. 78-9.
6. André Aciman, ‘Square Lamartine’, in False Papers: Essays on Exile and Memory (2000). Alvaro de Soto mentioned Vladimir Nabokov, who referred to his own “perfectly normal trilingual childhood”.