Cass Williamson

The notion of "home" means many things to many people. To the Global Nomad or "Marginal Man", it is that place which may hold no memories, no loved ones, nothing tangible or concrete - maybe only a name of a city in a country far away which speaks directly to the heart and soul of the inner being wanting to belong somewhere. It might also be that forever-changing venue, where faces, names, places are constant mobiles: The essence of home being synonymous with change and motion.

"Economic immigrants" and "displaced children" are just two of the terms I have heard used to describe, in the former, the consequences of my parents’ decision to seek out a better life for their children than they had had and, in the latter, my and my brother's and sister's predicament of being left behind with surrogate or extended families.

Cass D. Williamson, the Research Co-ordinator for 'Children of the Wind’, is a successful second generation, third culture adult. She possesses personal credentials, which enable her to instantly identify with this project. She is very competent and more than able to analyse, objectively, the various complex elements and components of the research from the vantage point of an insider and not merely from the perspective of a curious observer.

My Story

I am the youngest in my family and was just approaching 18 months old when separated from my parents. I was born in Kingston, Jamaica and lived there, with a surrogate or extended family, for the first seven years of my young life. The journey to England is now, nothing more than a blur. You can only imagine the emotional trauma, resulting from that separation, which I have carried throughout my life. When re-uniting with my parents nearly seven years after their departure, the meeting, for me, was a sad anonymous event. In the midst of a sea of faces, welcoming us into the family group, my older brother, just four years older than myself, had had to point out who my mother and father were.

I was educated in England, 13 years; have lived and worked in Portugal, 3 years; France, 10 years; USA, 2 years and The Netherlands/Germany - 8 years. This experience of country/culture hopping has indelibly marked me. It has influenced my outlook and views on societies and cultures. It has firmly shaped my intuitive neutral alle-giance to any one country and has also earned me the designations, which I now own, as a Global Nomad and an ATCK (Adult Third Culture Kid).

I have felt the weight of confusion and of not belonging or fitting in wherever I have lived and worked. The feelings of ‘rootlessness’ and ‘home’lessness had grown stronger and more painful over the years until May 1991. While attending a seminar on Global Nomads at the International Congress of the Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research (SIETAR INT'L) in Banff, Canada, I was introduced to a room full of people all recounting slight variations to my own story. For the first time in many years I felt at "home".

Since then, the need to explore the implications and consequences of such a transitional background (within an academic context) has been my passion. Having become familiar with a certain amount of American Intercultural literature, I recognize that much has been written about the "home" phenomenon, especially following studies of TCK's (Third Culture Kids), MK's, (Military Kids), etc., with America being the ‘home-culture’ or ‘passport-culture’ of origin. It is my intention with this study of ‘Children of the Wind’ to conduct a parallel enquiry, concentrating initially, on the perspective of the Jamaican in England.