Home and Away: Australia's third culture youth missing from the multicultural conversation

Filipino food at home. Western food in my lunchbox.

A tan Australians admired. A “darker complexion” according to Filipino beauty standards.

Replying back to my parents in broken Tagalog. Replying back to my school teachers in English, with a meticulously practised Australian accent.

A constant internal tug of war. A paradox that makes me feel foreign in both worlds.

(Credit: Adobe Stock - Education License)

A generation of young Australians is growing up navigating multiple cultures. Balancing life in Australia and the weight of cultural expectation. They speak multiple languages, shift between customs, and often find themselves translating not just words, but their entire characters, treading carefully on a thin line between pride and pressure.

Third culture kids or TCKs is a term coined by sociologist Ruth Hill in the 1950s, originally a term to define the children of expats. The definition has expanded to include individuals who spend their formative years in cultures different from their parents', creating a blended identity that's neither fully their heritage culture nor their host culture.

In our post-war era of unprecedented migration, third culture youth numbers have reached new highs in Australia.

I am one among this diaspora—the daughter of Filipino migrants who traded familiarity for possibility. The life they built for my sister and me required us to master something they never explicitly taught: the art of cultural code-switching.

CEO of Third Culture Australia, Krushnadevsinh (Kano) Ravalji, spoke to The Swanston Gazette about the issues of third culture youth in Australia. 

For a country that prides itself on its multiculturalism, the media and policy makers tend to disregard “the nuance in those communities”.

He also speaks to the importance of inclusion within these environments.

“For those communities, I’d love to see them open up the space and allow for third culture people to come into those spaces,” he said.

This experience resonates across Australia's growing third culture community. Kat, who has grown up in Australia her whole life and has Greek-Cypriot heritage, describes her experience as a third culture kid.

“Living between cultures has definitely shaped my sense of belonging, in the sense that the way I behave in order to ‘belong’ is fluid and changing,” said Kat.

The very concept of a third culture is rather contemporary. In contrast to the likes of the United States or the United Kingdom, migration is relatively new in Australia.

Multiculturalism still has a long way to go, let alone the acknowledgement of third culture youth.

The third culture demographic in Australia does not exist as a formal statistical category, so it is difficult to truly quantify the existence of TCKs. But statistics aren’t needed to illustrate the larger presence of third culture youth. Simpler terms can signify this, such as ‘Filipino-Australian’ or ‘Turkish-Australian’.

While Australia has infrastructure to support these communities—with organisations such as Multicultural Australia advocating for “positive conversations about inclusion and belonging for everyone”—the conversation tends to focus on first-generation immigrants rather than their children who face unique challenges of cultural code-switching and identity formation.

The gap in this support becomes evident when examining how third culture youth often feel like outsiders in Australian society, while simultaneously finding themselves excluded from their own heritage communities.

Some multicultural communities remain closed off to their younger generation, viewing them as too Westernised to truly appreciate ancestral culture and traditions. This double rejection leaves TCKs adrift; too foreign for mainstream Australia, yet too assimilated for their parents' communities.

​​“When you’re very young and want to find a sense of belonging and identity, it becomes very challenging,” Kano from Third Culture Australia said.

This sentiment resonates deeply for Kat, who remains connected to her heritage.

“I tried going to Greek school, but I’m not fluent, so when I try to talk to my parents’ friends, especially, I feel very judged,” she said.

“I significantly tone down the slang that I use with my Australian friends when I’m with my Greek ones; not because they won't understand, but because they might perceive me as ‘more Greek’ if there is an absence of any Australian nuance in my vernacular.”

These challenges manifest similarly for Ivy. She has spent a significant amount of time growing up in Vietnam, and is now living in Australia. 

She described her initial experience of Australia as being “stuck in between” both cultures.

“I felt different because of my accent, or when I didn’t get certain jokes or slang. I still face stereotypes or awkward questions,” she said.

Being a TCK comes with a certain rigidity. An expectation to have an equal footing in both your parents’ culture and home culture. Yet this binary thinking is part of the problem.

“You might force yourself to fit into one [culture] or [another],” said Kano. “You don’t have to be fifty-fifty. You can be 70 percent here and 30 percent here.”

Existing within a cultural in-between is a reality for the third culture youth of today, those who have spent their childhoods overcompensating on both sides.

The pressure to be perfectly Filipino and perfectly Australian, to speak flawless Tagalog and accentless English, to honour tradition while embracing modernity; it's an impossible standard.

Third culture youth aren't asking to be fixed; they're asking to be understood. To have their experiences validated as authentically Australian, even when those experiences don't fit neatly into existing categories.

In a nation built on migration, being caught between cultures isn't a problem to solve. 

Third culture youth have become the heartbeat of contemporary Australia.