Expat. Immigrant. Assimilant.

Thank you for sharing, Maureen! This was very inspiring and thought-provoking. I hope you will share more!

Wow, Rosedeniz, giving birth certainly qualifies as a major assimilation turning point! Congratulations!

Great distinction, Catherine. being part of a wave means you have the chance to adjust together….but also I imagine some adjusted to their new environment faster or more readily, all with their own tipping points.

I guess I don't fit the typical expat definition as I also have dual citizenship. It just put me in another category than short-term or always-moving expats. Claiming citizenship when I married, within a month of moving to Turkey, meant I hadn't gone through the rites-of-passage of expatriation at the time, so citizenship was not a tipping point for me at all.
I agree there is no single tipping point as Turkey still surprises me in many ways. But examples for me would be telling a joke and getting a laugh; complaining about something with friends and them not feeling the yabanci was speaking out of turn; talking to my mother-in-law without a translator for the first time; doing exams in Turkish without any worry about language; dealing with the children's school confidently. None are major achievements on their own, but definitely add up to a picture of assimilation!

I wrote a previous post on being an expat in my own country. I learn to speak English when I was 21 and have been living in an anglo environment for the past twenty-four. I'm a writer, and write in English. I consider myself sometimes more fluent in that language than a lot of anglos. Yet, people act astounded when I tell them my novels are in English. In a subtle way I can't pinpoint, regardless of how long I've lived in the anglo culture, I'm still considered a francophone.

Over the last twenty years or so Irish-Americans such as myself have begin to come to terms with the idea that our nineteenth century assimilation into the American fabric was not without great consequence. When the Irish came they failed to pass along their history and culture to their children. They'd survived humiliation and hunger: Who talked about the horrors gone by? Ancestry, stories, genealogy were lost; the Irish raced from their past. Their goal was to get to America alive, assimilate, and forget.
The problem was the Irish, like many immigrants in many countries, weren't accepted by the natives. Since the Irish weren’t accepted as “Americans,” they needed to create a new identity. The stories and history were lost and forgotten, but one of the few things that carried over from Ireland was the importance of the pub or saloon in America. Soon drinking began to symbolize group identity uniquely defining the Irish and separating them from other groups. The Irish became American, but with a hyphenated twist, an Irish-American, a name, which still carries with it the stereotype of heavy drinking. Wouldn't it be great if all the titles, hyphenations, and stereotypes were eliminated. After all, aren't we all as one with each other? Assimilation often comes with it a heavy price tag.
Charles Hale
http://www.storiesfromthestove.com

Thank you for your very thought-provoking post, VALERIE! I can surely relate to how you feel. While I have been living and working in Istanbul for almost 10 months now, my story begins when my family immigrated from Egypt to the US when I was a toddler. While I was young, assimilating with New Yorkers given my very Middle Eastern parents and the fact that I was the first born daughter was hardly an easy experience growing up. I never felt quite like the others in my school, university or workplace. I faced so many challenges although I spoke English and was educated in the same schools as all the other Americans around me. So when I got older, I jumped at the opportunity to live in my home country of Egypt. My entire life I thought I was 50% American/50% Egyptian. Well, that changed the second I stepped foot in Egypt! After months of struggling with my own identify…I realized that I really do have a truly a hybrid identity. I do not identify with a single nation-state, as much as have identities WITH certain things/ideas from many nation-states. My efforts are to take the best from the culture I live in and create my own identity based on the values that I can most relate to, then try to emulate. Basically, while it is difficult at first, I see it as a blessing – how liberating it is to choose without being tied down to one way of thinking! Labels just can't apply….assimilation for me, is being comfortable enough with my surroundings to feel like I can grow and be myself. Which is a proud Global Citizen! Thanks for letting me get that out, I know this is very long. This is my very first blog post on this topic – which has always been a very private, until now )))

Wonderful post, Valerie – it's as if you've been reading my mind. I'm also the three personas of your title, yet none of them sums me up. Much like Turkey itself: is it Europe, Asia, or the Middle East? I find there are no easy labels to accurately describe me, or my home country. Maybe that's why I feel most myself here.

Even after nearly 12 years, my assimilation tipping point has yet to come, and perhaps it never will. While I don't feel foreign, I'm constantly being reminded that I am. A hazard of working in tourism perhaps, and living in the most touristic spots – being around visitors, speaking languages other than Turkish and being taken as a traveler in my own neighborhood. But that's okay – I know I'll never fit in as if I were born here.

So, what's the easy label for someone like us? We're going to have to invent it, I think!