Australian TCKs: update
Tomorrow is Australia Day, a day that is complicated, especially for expats (something I've written about before) because it marks the day this entire continent was invaded by outsiders. With the difficulties and mess and hardships in mind, it seems an apt day for this announcement:
The first draft of the Aussie TCKs manuscript, co-written with Kath Williams, is complete! Now we are looking for more survey responses to provide better statistics, and selecting quotes from Australian TCKs to go in the book.
Below are a few charts and quotes from the survey so far: some in-progress results to give you a peek at where we’re at. I hope this gives you some insights into the sorts of stories we’re already hearing, and the range of experiences being reflected in the survey data so far.
As you can see, about 3/4 of the people who have responded so far are Millenials or Gen Z adult TCKs. We are definitely seeking responses from older Australian TCKs as well! Most have lived in Australia both as children and as adults, though for some it was only one or the other, and some have only ever visited.
When it comes to how many years of childhood our survey respondents lived outside Australia, the answers are quite evenly spread; we can divide the data into five groups of similar size.
If you lived outside Australia before age 18 while holding Australian citizenship, please take the survey! And pass the information on to anyone you know who might be interested.
“We had a lot of transition training in school but it was for repatriation to an American context, not for the Australian context. Everything I learned about repatriation came from my Australian parents.”
“I was born in the country my parents were working in (India) so I didn’t feel very Australian. I was seen as a foreigner/an Australian but didn’t really feel like one.”
“Never lived in Australia and never considered myself to have any “Australianess” despite having the passport and an Australian parent.”
“One of the things that I had to grapple with identifying as an Australian overseas was people not believing me or not thinking that I was a real Aussie because I was not white.”
“I wish people knew that there were different KINDS of Australian accents. I had a pretty mild Sydney kind of accent; not everyone speaks like Steve Irwin.”
“I was treated as an authority on Australia and its culture by Chilean peers, even though I had barely any memories of it. My closest friends were other Australian TCKs, but I could not identify this or explain why until after moving to Australia.”
“I used to hate the sound of an Australian accent as a child. It sounded so ‘bogan’, now having lived here a few years, I have adopted the Australian accent and find it more endearing.”
“I hated calling Australia home when I first repatriated, however over the years as friends and places overseas became lost to me, I started to call Australia ‘home’, but more so for the people I love here than the actual place.”
