We wholeheartedly thank Costanza De Salvia, daughter of our dear Ginevra Niccolini Serragli, who occasionally writes for Expatclic, for allowing us to publish this article she wrote in 2020.
Costanza was born in Florence in 1998. She has lived in Geneva and Hong Kong, where she attended a French international school, and then London, for university and her master. A fully international life, and she was also one of the first to obtain a tourist visa to Saudi Arabia in 2019!
I am what the American sociologist Ruth Hill Useem would call a Third Culture Kid.
Italian born.
French raised, in several parts of the globe.
And this is whom I identify myself with, or at least, most of the time.
“Let me get this straight. You’re Italian, speak fluently English and French, live in London, but your parents are based in the Middle East? I’m intrigued. So, where are you from?”
This is usually how a conversation with a stranger starts. I would then ask if they want the short or the long version. If we both have time, I go for the latter.
And this is the story I tell them.
I moved with my family from Florence, Italy, to Geneva, Switzerland, when I was very young, and this is when it all changed. And by it, I mean my life, I mean me. I discovered a new language, a new country, a new culture, a new me. I started seeing the world differently, and I started loving it.
I can still remember the look on my Italian family and friends when I returned back home for the first time. Puzzled. They couldn’t and wouldn’t understand what I was experiencing, for obvious reasons. And this made me grasp the people I could really count on.
Year after year, friends vanished. But others stayed. And it made me realise -at a rather young age- that not everyone is alike. Not everyone is willing to make the efforts of building and strengthening friendships with people they don’t have that much in common with anymore. And it made me miserable at first, of course, what could you possibly expect from a 7 to 10 year-old, but it also made me appreciate even more the people who kept making an effort and spared time for me whenever I was coming back.
Some years later, it all happened again. But this time I was ready-ish. The destination was a bit further. Asia. The fragrant harbour. The great Hong Kong. Or at least, it became great for me after a while. There, I bloomed like a flower during springtime. I discovered new people, people who lost count of the times they moved places, that had friends all over the globe and were loving it. I discovered a completely new culture, new food, new places and a re-discovered once again myself.
Without these experiences, I would never be the person I am today. This allowed me to make my first real step into the world, this time by myself. Later I moved again, to London to pursue my dream of studying marketing. I knew it would have been hard at first, but I also knew that I wanted it and that I needed it. So there I was, a 17-year-old me, fighting for her place in the world. I was the youngest of my course – so young I couldn’t even set foot in a pub, imagine how fun freshers’ week was for me!
I was the French girl in the eyes of my Italian friends, the Italian girl for my French friends and a strange in-between for everyone else.
The funny part would come when people asked me the language I feel more comfortable with. And after seeing a doubtful look on my face, they would then have a sort of ‘aha’ moment, thinking they would have finally cracked the enigma, which would usually be followed up by one of the dullest questions of all times: “it’s easy, what language do you dream in?”. Besides the fact that I bet no one remembers an actual conversation in their dreams, people couldn’t quite get the fact that I still didn’t know what to answer…
Useless to say that I had my fair share of an identity crisis at first. But it also made me realise the extreme advantage I had: I could fit in anywhere and everywhere!
And this is still true today. I actually got my first job last year in a PR agency in Hong Kong, partly because of my background, besides my fantastic skillset and outstanding qualifications, of course! They were looking for an Italian, French and English-speaking person with experience in an Asian context. I mean, the job was tailor-made for me! I am currently finishing a master’s in advertising at the University of the Arts London, where I am literally surrounded by culture – among the 22 students in my course, there are 15 nationalities! And couldn’t feel more at home. Interestingly, the only British person in the class is our professor, who has probably learned more this year about Mexican festivities, Korean food, Brazilian music or Austrian craft beer than a lifetime worth of National Geographic’s reading.
At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter what your passport says, where you were born or where you lived, you are what you want the world to see you as.
Costanza
October 2022
All photos ©Costanza
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