Migration, Diversity,and EducationBeyond Third Culture Kids

Edited by

Saija Benjamin and Fred DervinUniversity of Helsinki, Plnland

palgravemacmillan

4Non-Place Kids? Marc Auge'sNon-Place and Third Culture KidsChristian Triebel

To be means to have space. Every being strives to provide and topreserve space for itself. This means above all a physical location-the body, a piece of soil, a home, a city, a country, the world. It alsomeans a social"space"-a vocation, a sphere of influence, a group, ahistorical period, a place in remembrance and anticipation, a placewithin a structure of values and meanings. Not to have space is notto be. (1951, p. 194)

The German American existentialist philosopher and theologian PaulTillich argued the following about our urgent need to belong to a place:

Whether we realize it or not, places hold immense power over us. Weexpect the question 'Where are you from?' to give us a glimpse of aperson's identity so that we can grasp who they are and what we canexpect of them. Geographical answers make sense to us. However, whatpeople are really asking for is not a birth certificate but the metaphori-cal place one stands at: the place from which one speaks and argues.Specific places affirm our assumptions so that we can all move onfeeling comfortable in our presumed knowledge that we have a prettyaccurate picture of who we are dealing with. Similarly, to lay claim toa place (e.g. "This is Spartal" 01' maybe less dramatically: "I am a PhDstudent at King's College London.") lends us the voice of multitudesand gives us the authority to be someone. Hence, "To be means to havespace" (Tillich, 1951, p. 194).This chapter is a concept paper which seeks to introduce an alter-

native way to understand the experience of Third Culture Kids andthe issue of belonging to someplace through the work of the Frenchanthropologist Marc Auge (1935-). TCKs' have a 'rather complicated

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Marc Auge: 'Non-Place'

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'. ,.relation to place (Pollock &-Van Reken, 2009). Marked by high mobilityand transcultural/national transition, many TCKs frequently movefrom place to place and continue this pattern of mobility in some formor another during their adult life (Cottrell & Useem, 1994). JohannGottfried Herder's (1966) archaic, yet still widely held, cultural idealof one place, one people, one language and one culture looms in thebackground only to haunt the unassuming TCKs later upon repatriat-ing, when they realize they are not at all 'at home' and are unable togive a 'valid' answer to the questions of where they are from, where theybelong to or where their loyalties lie. Without a place that respondsto the expectations of the person asking, TCKs are ultimately unableto present themselves as a "valid" person. No place to call home? "Not tohave space is not to be" (Tillich, 1951, p. 194)!What kind of places do TCKs inhabit? With every transition, TCKs

find themselves boarding another plane, wandering through anothertransit lounge or searching for the Wi-Fi spot that would take them'home' to their Facebook newsfeed. Transitions become such an inte-gral part of the experience of TCKs that these transient places throughwhich information, people and commodities rush become strangelyfamiliar and even relieving. No one is at home at an airport; no onestays there for long. There is a pinch of sadness looking back, a hint ofexcitement looking forward and unease everywhere. Many TCKs findthese places familiar and even strangely reassuring. However, are placessuch as airports 'valid' places to belong to?

We assign different significance to various places: there are places ofidentity and stability, places perceived as valid, and there are placesof transition and convenience, places perceived as invalid. It is herethat we introduce (perhaps for the first time) to the discussion ofTCKsand the question of place the French anthropologist Marc Auge'sconcept of 'non-place', found in his work by the same name (1995).What Auge did was give a name to liminal places; places betwixt andbetween, designed solely to be passed through and to connect otherplaces of importance. These places house things and people temporar-ily only. They are fluid places with no permanence: 'Non-Place'. Wefind non-place in airports, train stations, shopping centers and hotels.Most importantly for us, we find non-place in expatriate communi-ties designed around the expatriate family's purpose of mediatingbetween host and home (Useem, Useem, & Donoghue, 1963). People

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in such communities come and go with the expectation that it is onlya temporary arrangement.Non-place emerged following our transition to what Auge (1995) calls

'supermodernity' and stands in contrast to 'anthropological place', theplace people conventionally belong to (p. 29). Closely related to Auge'snon-place is the anthropological concept of liminality. "Liminality"was coined by Arnold van Gennep (1960) and further developed byVictor Turner (1990). Stemming from the Latin word "limen" meaningthreshold, doorway or limit, Iiminality describes the psychological, neu-rological, or metaphysical state of in-betweenness. When undergoinga transformation, a person leaves behind his/her pre-liminal identity,enters into a liminal period of ambiguity and finally settles into a newlyadopted post-liminal identity. During the liminal state, the person isneither here nor there, neither this nor that. Non-place, as liminalspace, can be understood as a spatial exploration of liminality. However,non-place differs from liminality in that it is a concrete place that canbe shared and experienced with others. Furthermore, while liminalityis usually understood to be temporary, non-place as a place remainsthat can always be revisited. Finally, non-place is much closer relatedto spatial concepts such as "home" than liminality. A discussion ofAuge's non-place will shed further light on the TCK's relation to placeand highlight the issues with seeking an accepted "valid" identity as aperson from "nowhere".

The dominance of places we call home:'anthropological place'

Auge (1995) defines the place where a culture is located and cultivated"anthropological, place". This geographical area is "occupied by theindigenous inhabitants who live in it, cultivate it, defend it, mark itsstrong points and keep its frontiers under surveillance" (p. 42). It is asmuch real, since it does exist in time and space, as it is an invention,a "symbolic construction of space" (p. 51) invested with meaning forthe people who live in it. In short, anthropological place Is-the place ofculture. Anthropological places are widely recognized as valid places tobe from and belong to.Three important marks define anthropological place: identity, rela-

tions and history (Auge, 1995, pp. 51-56). First, anthropological placesare places of identity. Simply put, to be born in a place means to belongto this place and to identify with the meaning constructed in thisplace. Anthropological place teaches us who we are. Second, to inhabit

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this place means to occupy a position relative to other inhabitants. Inother words, these relations constitute the community of that place.The presence of these connections between people, which tell us wherewe belong, define anthropological place. Third, history provides eachanthropological place with its necessary stability and durability. History,real or imagined, establishes identity and relations as permanent andthus valid structures to rely on. Identities and relations are maintainedand protected through the organization of space and the setting intime. Anthropological places are historical places that employ monu-ments which transcend temporal contingencies and in which inhabit-ants can recognize themselves.Auge (1995) argues that such anthropological places are the loci of

culture. A person's motherland or hometown continues to be of par"ticular Significance to the acculturated person, no matter where theymight be. Awell-established anthropological place with a long history,a strong identity and an influential network of people gives a person hervalidity and bestows on her a cultured status. The question "Who areyou?" is inevitably linked to the question "Where are' you from?" andthe answer is expected to be a recognizable anthropological place withidentity, community, and history.Auge (1995) also reminds the reader that these anthropological places

are, in a sense, illusions. Anthropological places are imagined places. Thisis not to say that these illusions do not have powerful real-world conse-quences for people. Wars conducted between rival anthropological placeshave very real consequences. More familiarly to the TCK,having (or lack-ing) the right passport and visa, concepts based on attempts to regulate andprotect the constructed anthropological place, has shockingly real bearingson our lives. Nevertheless, anthropological places are the construct ofimagined communities (Anderson, 1991).Without this imagination of theinhabitants of anthropological-place events such as the Olympic Games,where 'we' cheer for 'our' team from 'our' country, would be absurd!And so we have to admit that anthropological place is only as pow-

erful as the significance and dominance we assign-to it. When timeschange there is always the possibility, to the excitement of some andthe horror of others, that constructs are discarded. What has changedto make space for the arrival of non-place?

The emergence of a new situation: 'supermodemity'

The emergence of a new situation Auge (1995) calls 'supermodernity'has made our contemporary world and the cultural places it consists

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of much more complicated. Supermodernity is characterized by itsessential quality of excess (p. 29). It is not a lack of culture, languageor people but an overabundance. Supermodernity relativizes anthro-pological place and overwhelms it. Auge names three figures of excess:Overabundance of events, spatial overabundance and individualizationof reference (overabundance of egos) (pp. 28-40).First, the overabundance of information and the increasing inter-

dependence of the world make it difficult to grasp the whole of thepresent and to ascribe meaning to the recent past. Auge argues that thisoverabundance of events threatens to rob our experience of meaning.In our contemporary world, for example, messages of true significancedrown in the cacophony of the Twittersphere.Second, progressing globalization causes the shrinking of the planet

and leads to spatial overabundance. Every place on earth feels withinreach. Auge (1995: 31) names three factors behind the excess of places:(A) the sense of the vastness of the universe reduced our earth to aninfinitesimal point; (B) rapid means of transportation are giving usaccess to places all over the world; (C) the media's 24-hour news cyclepresents us with instant vision of events taking place on the other side ofthe globe. The place I find myself has become more and more relativeto other places both near and far.These two figures of excess, events and places, relativize the way we

view ourselves in our time and place and give rise to the third figureof excess, namely, that of the individual. Auge (1995) observes thatlithe individual wants to be a world in himself; he intends to interpretthe information delivered to him by himself and for himself" (p. 37).Individuals, divorced from collective identification, from history andfrom grand narratives, must create meaning themselves. Thus each per-son creates his or her own frame of reference and judges the world fromhis or her point of view.Supermodernity has changed the way places function in our lives.

Chatting on Skype with family members half a world away, swappingLondon for Tokyo in a matter of hours (with the side effect of notknowing when to switch languages while suspended mid-air), scrollingdown Facebook's newsfeed with comments from friends scattered allover the globe undermines our sense of where we are now. Yet, this isthe life that many TCKsare accustomed to. Expatriate communities arespecifically designed to be supermodern: events from one end of theworld have to be communicated to this end of the world in real time;people have to be able to move at a minute's notice; successful media-tors have to transcend the frame of reference of both the host and home

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anthropological-place. TCKs find themselves out of place and dislocatedfrom anthropological place, which used to be the basis for stable andsolid identity, relationships and historical roots.

From place to non-place

Supermodernity inevitably gave birth to non-place. Auge (1995) writesthat /I [i]fa place can be defined as relational, historical, and concernedwith identity, then a space which cannot be defined as relational, orhistorical, or concerned with identity will be a non-place" (pp. 77-78).Movement and change mark these abstract non-places without roomfor lasting permanence. In his exploration of non-place, Auge almostsounds as if he laments the decline of anthropological places and pre-sents non-place as a lonely, cold, void place. In non-places, transactionsare wordless and automated. Road signs and travel guides replace realhistory. Non-places are places such as airplanes, highways, super-mallsand bullet trains -aswell as the facilities related to these such as hotels,lobbies, stations, airports and parking lots. Often entire urban centersbecome non-places. Non-place is designed to be passed through andalso bypass anthropological place. This leads to a feeling of disorienta-tion and discontinuity in the passers-by.The typical person who frequents these non-places is the supermod-

ern solitary traveler, which Auge (1995) contrasts with the pilgrim ofpast times (pp. 86-91). The discontinuity and disorientation of thesolitary traveler prevents him or her from being fully present in anthro-pological places. For travelers.in non-place, identity, relations or historydo not really make any sense. This is different from a pilgrimage whosedestination is overloaded with meaning. Non-place /I creates neither sin-gular identity nor relations; only solitude, and similitude" (Auge, 1995,p. 103). The numerous travelers find themselves alone together in theanonymity of non-place. On the road one becomes a license plate; onthe plane a seat number. Simply put, non-places do not give identities,do not establish relations, and do not have a history; The impressionthat Auge leaves of non-places is one of aloofness, artificial humanityand sterilized loneliness. Strangely non-place also comes with a hint offreedom from the demands of anthropological place. Undisturbed, non-place lets each person be themselves.A perfect illustration of the disconnect that non-place creates is

George Clooney's character in the film Up in the air (Reitman, 2009).The character has made flying endlessly from place to place to meetemployees and relieve them of their duties his everyday life. While

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traveling from one airport to another, from one hotel to another, he canfree himself from commitments but also finds himself alienated fromhis family, the people he fires and even the women he falls for. Whenasked on a flight where he is from, Clooney's character answers "here":up in the air, in non-place.Auge (1995) asks a similar question: Where are these individuals who

perpetually pass through non-place at home? He concludes that in theworld of supermodernity people are always and never at home (p. 109).

A second glance at Auge

The anthropological place/non-place distinction sheds light on howconstructed places function differently. Belonging somewhere or beingat home someplace means something quite different for the anthro-pologically placed person than it does for the non-placed person. Wehave to ask whether non-places can provide identities and whetherpeople at home everywhere and nowhere can have a sense of belong-ing together. For Auge (1995), non-places ate by definition not a validsource of identity and people frequenting non-places find themselvesin solitude (pp. 78, 87, 93, 103). However, the rather nihilistic depic-tion of non-place is oversimplified and biased. From the perspective ofsomeone firmly rooted in an anthropological place, non-place mightconstitute an ever growing and destructive threat that lays claim tomore and more of anthropological place's territory. From this perspec-tive, non-place is thought to strip anthropological place of its richhistory, empty it of its native people and eradicate its local identity.Emer O'Beime (2006) suggests that Auge writes about non-places

against the backdrop of a "contemporary existential crisis, a crisis ofrelations to the other, and by extension a crisis of individual identityconstituted through such relations" (p. 38). Auge sees a threat to identi-ties and communities in the emergence of non-place. This highlightsthe position from which Auge writes, namely, nostalgia. O'Betrne(2006) comments that Auge writes as someone "on the wrong side ofmiddle age, for whom the world is changing too fast, who.is nostalgicfor the world of his childhood, and who, while not yet out of touchwith current fashion, feels more allegiance to customs and values thathave disappeared or are disappearing" (p. 39). O'Beime argues that it isalso a personal crisis for the Parisian Auge who sees his anthropologi-cal place being decimated by a destructive non-place. In other words,when Augewrites that non-places lack identity, relations and history, heactually means that a place which lacks identity, relations and history

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for him is a non-place. In contrast, if a place is familiar to him it hasidentity, relations and history and thus constitutes an anthropologicalplace for him.The distinction between anthropological place and non-place is not

as objective as Auge would like the reader to believe but is rather amatter of perception. O'Beirne (2006) makes the case that what is ananthropological place for Auge might actually be a non-place for others(pp. 45-46). For example, Auge (2002) is inconsistent when it comes tohis description of the Paris Metro. The Paris Metro should be a typicalnon-place. However, for Auge it is a place intimately intertwined withhis own personal history as a Parisian and clearly an anthropologicalplace with history, character and community. Rather than being voidof meaning, the metro is full of meaning for Auge. He recognizes thestation names and the history behind the places that the trains stop at.Public transport is nevertheless a non-place for many others. One per-son's anthropological place is 'another person's non-place and vice versa.Correspondingly, what might be a non-place for Auge can actually

be the workplace of others and therefore become a place of relation-ships, of history and of identity. The hidden livelihoods of these work-ers, often entirely overlooked, are well illustrated in Steven Spielberg'Sfilm The Terminal (2004). The protagonist played by Tom Hanks findshimself stranded inside JFK Airport's transit lounge. He manages tolive a surprisingly social life, complete with poker nights and romanticdates. Sarah Sharma (2009) writes that "[ijn fact it is not the non-placethat displaces the local or creates asocial facelessness inasmuch as thetheorist of non-places [Augehimself] erases the local in these accountsof non-place" (p. 134). In other words, Auge refuses to view certainplaces as anthropological and does not allow identity and communityto emerge. Sharma especially emphasizes the.labor performed at non-places. Labor results in an emergence of locality, in other words, ofculture. She writes that "[ijf labor was taken into consideration then noclaim to local bypass or extraterritoriality of its contents can justly bemade" (p. 145). A space effectively ceases to be non-place and becomesan anthropological place for the people who work there. One person'snon-place is another person's anthropological place and vice versa.What about TCKs then? Are TCKsat home at non-places as non-place

or do particular third culture communities and their frequented placesact as anthropological place? After all, airports are two very differentplaces for the frequent flyer and the airline employee. For TCKs, thirdculture communities are still transient places. The expat family movesfrom one place to another until not only the transition in between

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assignments (e.g. the move from Tokyo to Frankfurt) but the assignmentin the host country itself becomes a period of transition between theprevious assignment and the following assignment.

Non-place and Third Culture Kids

Auge's distinction between anthropological place and non-place letsus see in a new light the classic yet also dated distinction between anessentialist home (first) culture, host (second) culture and third culture.What Pollock and Van Reken (2009) call home and host country fitneatly into Auge's category of anthropological place as they are placesof culture which bestow onto their inhabitants the conventional senseof identity, relations and history. TCKs, on the other hand, belong tothe category of non-place. The countries that expat families come fromand go to conventionally provide its local inhabitants with a stable andcontinuous identity and community. At least in many people's imagina-tion, we are supposed to be born in one place, identify with that placeand build our lives in the context of the community of that place.In contrast, third culture transforms its location into non-place. Both

non-place and third culture are characterized by transience. Both aremarked by the movement of people, commodities and information.Unlike immigrants, expat families are sent out and are expected toreturn to the parents' anthropological place. Even while residing inthe host country's anthropological place, the TCK's situation is alwaysa temporary, non-anthropological arrangement. We see here the col-lapsing of the temporally between (before and after) and the spatiallybetween (here and there) into one continuum governed by liminality.Non-place in this sense is closely related to liminality, TCKs residein liminal space, which is balanced on the "threshold", betwixt andbetween other places. Barbara Schaetti and Sheila Ramsey (1999) arguethat especially for highly mobile TCKs, regardless of whether theymight find themselves in home culture, host culture or on a flight inbetween, their experience is one of residing in constant liminal space.TCKsexperience places as liminal, as non-place, rather than as anthro-pological place. Not only do TCKsspend aslgniftcant amount of theirlives in non-places such as hotels or airports, but more significantlyTCKs transform many places into non-place especially when theseplaces are experience as only a temporary arrangement.From the point of view of anthropological place, the liminal space of

third culture is not a legitimate place with a permanent and stable iden-tity, community and history. Non-place and its occupants ·are viewed

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with suspicion.and are resisted. O'Beirne (2006) argues that for Augeonly anthropological place is able to nurture people in their relation toothers and give them meaning, identity, and community. Non-place,however, produces individuals in crisis and is presented as somethingwhich is lacking and invalid. Yet we have seen that what Auge mightpersonally not accept as anthropological place and condemn to non-place can for others be a place of identity, relations, and community. Ina sense, we can argue that from the point of view of those sympathetic toAuge only anthropological place produces valid persons whereas TCKs'non-place can only bring forth invalid "non-persons" in crisis withno recognizable 'valid' history, community or identity. Unless TCKsgivein to the power of anthropological place and start mimicking or adopt-ing the language of identity, history, and community of somewherethey shall never be accepted as valid persons by Auge, the championof anthropological place. It is from within anthropological place that"non-identities", "non-histories" and "non-relations" are imposed oninternationally highly mobile people from non-places. Anthropologicalplace is thus partly responsible for the creation and perpetuation ofnon-place and its 'non-people' by refusing to let non-place count as avalid place to belong to, identify with.In this sense, TCKs are thus non-persons with identities, histories,

and relationships not recognized by the standards of anthropologicalplace. What is not recognized as valid is not justified for keeping. Thisexperience surfaces as a sensation of loss, often hidden, and disen-franchised grief (Pollock & Van Reken, 2009, pp. 159-165, 183-188).Pollock and Van Reken (2009) identify four key areas in which the TCKexperiences losses due to their upbringing in non-place: people, places,pets, and possessions. In addition to these four concrete areas oflosses,Kathleen Gilbert (2008) also identifies existential losses on a deeperlevel, especially the loss of the sense of who one is and the loss of home.These losses correspond to the lack of identity and community thatAuge imposes on non-place.It is the nature of these losses that deserves particular attention.

Gilbert (2008) observes that at the root of the issue of loss lies mobi-lity, the key characteristic of non-place. She writes: "this mobility leadsto almost perpetualstate of psychological transition" (p. 94). Gilbertconfirms our argument that for TCKs any place relentlessly turns intonon-place.When moving from one place to another certain things have to be

given up or cannot even be claimed to be possessed in the first place.According to Gilbert (2008), "many of the losses experienced by TCKs,

particularly those that are hidden, are ambiguous. Ambiguous losses arethose that lack clarity and can lead to sharply different assessments ofexactly who or what has been lost" (p. 95). This makes sense if perma-nent possession of things and permanent relations to others are viewedas only properly belonging to anthropological place and its "proper"people. When a TCK,a non-person, has to let go of something preciousit is a non-loss not worth fussing over. Similarly, when a TCK has tosay goodbye to a fellow non-person, this is also labeled a non-loss of anon-relation. Thus Gilbert (2008) comments that "losses often are hid-den, and being hidden, are not acknowledged" (p. 95) and the grief oflosing a piece of oneself is disenfranchised. Denied the right to possess,TCKs are deprived of the right to recognize loss and stripped of theirright to mourn.The return "home" (i.e. the return to the supposedly only legitimate

anthropological place where rights and power are supposedly restored)is instead hailed as a victorious escape from non-place and a gloriousrestoration .of the liminal non-person to a "proper" person. Retiringexpatriates parents might look forward to being able to return to thesettled life they are used to and might encourage their children to dothe same in order to live a more "normal" life. What is thought of aspossessed from the point of Viewof TCKs(including existential conceptssuch as home or identity) is denied as invalid from the point of view ofanthropological place.Loss of persons, place, identity and home deserves a closer look. The

loss of persons due to mobility within non-place results from a peernetwork, which is in "a constant state of flux" (Gilbert, 2008, p. 99).Gilbert observes that commonly TCKsbuy into anthropologtcal place's"non-person"-argument and accept the loss of friends as.inevitable. Non-places are places that lack relations by the standards of anthropologicalplace because they are not seen as lasting and friendships formed thereare denied validity. In terms of loss of place, Gilbert (2008) observesthat each move to a new place dislocates some TCKsto such an extent thatnot only relationships are lost, but .the very sense of place is lost. Theconcept of place loses significance. When identity, community and per-sonal history are out of synch with the place one is occupying ormovingthrough, place simply stops to matter. Swapping one place for anotherdoes not even feel like a substantiaLloss anymore. For these TCKs, this"loss of non-place" due to moving from one third culture space toanother is an ambiguous loss. It becomes a "non-loss of place" instead.Whether a place could have been claimed as their own in the first placeis doubted by TCKsthemselves.

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Beyond tangible losses such as persons or places, .Gilbert (2008) statesthat TCKs frequently experience the loss of a sense of who they are.Gilbert (2008) gives the example of a TCKwho upon repatriating to theU.S.A.realizes that, although she had been told all her life that she wasan American, she was in fact different. Furthermore, having returned towhat she perceived as her actual "home" in Singapore after graduatinguniversity in the States, she also realized that the diplomatic compoundshe had belonged to growing up was now off limits. Asa result "she hadnowhere where she could be where she thought she was" (p. 105).Gilbert comments that "for TCKs, questions of who they are, what

they are, where they are from, what and who they can trust are exam-ples of existential losses with which they must cope" (2008: 102).Auge (1995) accurately predicts the existential loss TCKs experiencein non-places in terms of identity (who they are), history (where theyare from) and relations (the sense of belonging). Interestingly, Gilbert(2008) concludes that "it was only when [TCKs]leave a world wherethe only constant is change (... ), where others entered and exited one IS

life, and where it is normal for people to move from setting to settingand from country to country, that TCKs learned they were different"(p. 104). In other words, the lack of identity, history and relations feltupon the expatriate family's return to the parents', anthropologicalplace is introduced to the TCK from outside non-place. While withinthe highly mobile environment of non-place TCKsare accepted as validpersons by their TCK peers. When confronted by non-TCKs withinanthropological place, TCKsturn into non-persons. Non-persons mightbe singled out as "circus freaksI' 01' pushed to the margins as "terminallyunique" resulting in "profound loneliness - an inability to ever com-pletely mesh with a given culture" (Gilbert, 2008, p. 105).As a consequence of TCKs' liminality and upbringing in non-place,

TCKs tend to mediate and negotiate between host and home, oneanthropological place and another. TCKs position themselves betweenidentities. TCKs identify with between-ness and with liminality.However, a sense of loss of identity occurs when the right to an iden-tity within non-place is rejected as invalid from the point of view ofanthropological place. Even when TCKs claim non-place and liminal-ity as their identity, anthropological place and its inhabitants wouldnot accept that as a valid answer to 'the nagging question of "Who areyou?" and "Where are you from?".Finally, Gilbert (2008) mentions loss of a place TCKs can call home.

Instead of a straightforward loss, however, Gilbert suggests that a reali-zation of the absence of home is more accurate. TCKsrepatriate only to

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find that what they had been taught by their parents, their schools orthe occasional news report to be their "true home", their promised land,turns out to be oddly strange and not too often a bitter disappointment(Smith, 1996). Anthropological place prescribes what "home" ought tobe for everyone but TCKs realize that this deviates significantly fromtheir experience of "home" in non-place. For the TCK, either "home"does not really exist at all or "home" is something quite different fromwhat anthropological place deems valid. Either way, the question ofwhere one is from does not elicit the desired answer for the anthropo-logically located inquirer. This results in the sometimes painful realiza-tion by TCKsthat they do not have a real place to belong to and neverreally had one. Thus, participants in Gilbert'S study expressed "home-sickness for a home that either does not exist or is a place to which theycan no longer return" (Gilbert, 2008, p. 106). TCKs either flnd theirhome in non-place (a "home" beyond place) or must live homelesslyin anthropological place. Unable to accurately place the TCKon a map,the anthropologically placed person does not know what to make ofthis non-person who appeared out of nowhere. Without a category toplace the TCKinto, without a recognizable identity to discern and with-out being able to perceive the place where the TCK comes from, howcan the anthropologically placed person see the TCKat all? TCKseasilyfade into obscurity. A non-person from non-place becomes invisible.All this sounds quite pessimistic. Ought we to participate in Auge's

dismissal of non-place and agree that supermodernity and non-placeproduce defective non-persons in need of reconstruction and correc-tion? I do not believe so.

The potential of non-place

While it is true that many TCKs struggle with concepts of identity,home and belonging (Hoersting & Jenkins 2011), non place also has itsown dynamic of identity that is different from that of anthropologicalplace. O'Beirne (2006) suggests that rather than "simply presenting suchspaces as repositories of alienation and loneliness [we should] exploretheir potential to produce contemporary forms of relation, and there-fore identity and meaning" (p. 49). This is where studies of TCKs andtheir relation to place shine. The potential of non-place lies precisely inits deprivation of identity, history and community by anthropologicalplace: here is freedom from the rigid structures of anthropological placeand the demands they impose on their inhabitants. O'Beirne (2006) evengoes so far as to suggest that "the non-lieu [non-place], precisely because

From the fringes to the centers

100 Christian Triebel

of its apparently blank quality, can be a salvation for the individual [fromthe constraints of anthropological place] 1/ (p. 48). New identities can beforged within the relative freedom of non-place. Encapsulating margin-ality can be turned into constructive marginality (Bennett, 1993) andinfused with a unique purpose and meaning only possible within non-place. Of course, non-place can be encapsulating when it prevents theTCK from exercising agency and when the plurality and contradictionsexperienced cause paralysis. However, non-place when constructivecan be quite liberating. It gives TCKsan outside perspective that is freefrom entanglement in local controversies. Schaetti and Ramsey suggestthat "exposed to multiple cultural traditions (...) [TCKs]have the oppor-tunity to achieve identities informed by all, constricted by none, balancedon the threshold of each" (1999). TCKs should embrace their statusas non-person and proudly claim non-place as their own territory.Claiming non-place as home and non-persons as peers helps TCKsasserttheir right to possess identity, community and home ill their own way.Can it be the case then that TCKs are granted much more flex-

ibility in defining themselves than anthropologically places people?Geographical notions of home are replaced with psychological, univer-sal, social, spiritual or global notions of home that can provide the TCKwith a different kind of identity, history, community and ultimatelymeaning. In a sense, non-place is a space beyond place. Far from beinga deficient place, it is a higher place. Non-place is a transcendent place.

The risk of feeling terminally unique and encapsulated in one's margin-ality remains as long as TCKs are judged according to the standards ofanthropologically placed identity, community and history. When Augeimagined non-place perhaps he had in mind spaces filling the meaning-less void in between the many centers of cultural and political signifi-cance. Inhis vision, anthropological placeswere at the center of the worldand non-places at its fringes. Non-place was the land of the unculturedwhich had yet to write their history, establish their identity and build theircommunity. In the end, powerful anthropological places would alwayshave the upper hand over powerless non-places and non-place wouldalways have to play by the rules set forth by anthropological place. But isthis still the case? In fact, in our transcultural, increasingly interconnectedglobal world, have not non-places become the new centers of significancewhere various people, commodities and ideas come together? If so, thenTCKshave a privileged place to call their native territory.

Non-Place Kids? 101

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