Migratory Patterns

Barbara Chen got her first taste of China in 1989 (what timing!), fell in love, got married, and after a stint back in the US, has called Beijing home for the last 18 years. During that time she's raised a bi-cultural family and now works as a recruiter for an American university, helping Chinese kids make the leap to the west for their education. But, as she taught me, Chinese students who want to go overseas actually have to enter a western-style education system long before they even take the SAT. This required exit from the domestic system has created a kind of parallel world where Chinese kids end up code switching between school and home, essentially migrating internally before they migrate to another country. She also taught me a new term: "Cross-culture kids"

Get in touch with comments, suggestions or interview recommendations:  

• Twitter: @zax2000
• eMail: [email protected]

  Check out all of the shows in the Migration Media network on the web: www.migrationmedia.net   Please take a moment to "Like" us and leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Podbean or wherever you get your podcasts... and subscribe!

Born in America, Mio Rudnicki grew up as a TCK, bouncing around the world as part of a multicultural family. In essence, she's been a migrant all of her life. So when she ended up in the US for high school and college, the experience that most of us take for granted was a huge culture shock for her. How do you navigate your daily life when you're surrounded by your fellow countrymen, but they're all completely and utterly foreign to you? It brings a whole new level of dread to that first day in the cafeteria when you're looking for a place to sit down for lunch. And after school is over, what then? How do you define yourself once the familiar social structures of educational institutions are gone? It's a problem that her engineering mind is just now starting to figure out.

NOTE: If you haven't yet, be sure to listen to Episode #19 to hear my interview with Tanya Crossman, as it makes an excellent companion to this discussion!   Get in touch with comments, suggestions or interview recommendations:  

• Twitter: @zax2000
• eMail: [email protected]

  Check out all of the shows in the Migration Media network on the web: www.migrationmedia.net   Please take a moment to "Like" us and leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Podbean or wherever you get your podcasts... and subscribe!

I've often described Badr Benjelloun as the quintessential example of a "Renaissance Expat," and this was never more obvious than when he opened Cu Ju, Beijing's first (and only) Moroccan/Rum/Sports Bar in one of the city's 1,000 year-old hutongs (alleyways). It was seen by many as a living example of the unique cultural mash-up that can only happen when you bring together disparate peoples into a city full of migrants. His #MigrationStory, which includes a stint as the "Blogger of Record" tracking Beijing's dynamic music scene in the 2000s and 2010s, illustrates how migration enlivens and enriches a place, and how people who come from abroad bring new ideas, perspectives and cultural ephemera to a city, making it a more vibrant, enjoyable place to live.   If you're in Beijing, check out Badr's restaurant-bar-livehouse, Caravan:  

• https://caravanbeijing.com

  Get in touch with comments, suggestions or interview recommendations:  

• Twitter: @zax2000
• eMail: [email protected]

  Check out all of the shows in the Migration Media network on the web: www.migrationmedia.net   Please take a moment to "Like" us and leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Podbean or wherever you get your podcasts... and subscribe!

Born and raised on Russia's "Fish Tail" island of Sakhalin, Margarita Lukavenko got her first taste of foreign culture when she went to Malaysia as part of an exchange program at 16. Save for her final year of high school, she's been a migrant ever since- first as a student in far-off (and practically foreign) Moscow, and then as an educator and entrepreneur in China. As we discover in our conversation, this constant living outside of her place of origin has caused her to ask fundamental questions about her identity. It's something that happens to many of us, but we rarely talk about it in such an open manner. Leave it to a Russian to state bluntly what the rest of us only hint at.  

• Follow Margarita on Instagram to learn more about EduMatters & her work in the field of global education collaboration: @Margarita_GlobalLiving

  Get in touch with comments, suggestions or interview recommendations:  

• Twitter: @zax2000
• eMail: [email protected]

  Check out all of the shows in the Migration Media network on the web: www.migrationmedia.net   Please take a moment to "Like" us and leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Podbean or wherever you get your podcasts.... and subscribe!

When I met Dr. Kate Bailey Gardner in Boston in the mid-1990s she felt, as she says, "Like a bit of a social outcast." The term "TCK" was still new and she was coming to terms with her identity as a kid raised overseas who had moved back to her passport country for college. She's been on a journey to find herself and what "Home" means for her ever since. It's a #MigrationStory that's taken her from Hong Kong & Singapore to Boston, then to Beijing, then back to Boston, then to West Hartford, CT, then, with her children in tow, to Shanghai, and, finally, back to Hong Kong again. Has she finally found her place? Could her place be right back where she started?

 

Listen to episode #021 to hear my interview with Kate's husband, Josh Gardner, and to get the flip-side of this family's migration story. Kate & Josh are an amazing couple and their parallel journeys of self-discovery, both at "home" and abroad, are a microcosm of what millions of other families are going through all around the world.

 

Get in touch with comments, suggestions or interview recommendations:  

• Twitter: @zax2000
• eMail: [email protected]

  Check out all of the shows in the Migration Media network on the web: www.migrationmedia.net   Please take a moment to "Like" us and leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Podbean or wherever you get your podcasts... and subscribe!

We humans have a deep need for community- none more so than we humans who are living outside of our places of origin. The power of community organizing is twofold: We not only make ourselves feel like we fit and belong in a place, but it also helps us discover more about ourselves. The overseas journey of my guest this week, Abe Sorock, began as a member of the Moishe House project, which sent him down a road of self-discovery. Did he help to organize the community, or did it organize him? His current with with the Global Shapers project is an extension of this idea- The need for community to help with mentorship. As Abe notes, with younger expats there are usually lots of folks around who are either in your age cohort or who are really senior. There is a shortage of mid-level role-models and advisers. So community is necessary... This current generation has witnessed massive change and has found themselves having to live in ways that nobody has taught them how to live. And this goes double for those of us who are living overseas. Then there's the challenging notion of people who have been outside of the US for the last decade as being "The Last Americans."

Learn more about Moishe House & Global Shapers and find branches near you:

• https://www.moishehouse.org
• https://www.globalshapers.org

Get in touch with comments, suggestions or interview recommendations:

• Twitter: @zax2000
• eMail: [email protected]

Check out all of the shows in the Migration Media network on the web: www.migrationmedia.net   Please take a moment to "Like" us and leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Podbean or wherever you get your podcasts... and subscribe!

My good friend Adriana, who I have known since she first moved to China from her native Romania back in 2011, is a person I've always admired. From an early age she stood out from her cohort- people who came of age just as their country emerged from behind the Iron Curtain. She discovered Couchsurfing in its early days and was an active member of the community, constantly hosting visitors from abroad. Those interactions showed her that there was a big, fascinating world out there and she's been exploring it ever since, traveling through countless counties through the last decade. She sat down with me during my recent visit to Shanghai, and we had a deep discussion about the nebulous "thing" that seems to lie within everyone who chooses to migrate. Are we born this way? What triggers the desire to move, to explore ourselves by searching for new opportunities over the horizon?

Get in touch with comments, suggestions or interview recommendations:  

• Twitter: @zax2000
• eMail: [email protected]

  Check out all of the shows in the Migration Media network on the web: www.migrationmedia.net   Please take a moment to "Like" us and leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Podbean or wherever you get your podcasts... and subscribe!

It'd be tough to find someone who has had a more successful #MigrationStory than PT Black, but it's also one that you would not expect. He grew up in a famous Boston neighborhood, was able to get into top schools and then launch a career in international business in New York. But after watching the second plane fly into the World Trade Center from his apartment in Brooklyn, he felt like he needed to choose an alternate path. He landed in Shanghai just a few months later. Now, after a career in market research and development that has had him at the forefront of China's historic transformation into a modern world-leading economy, he finds himself reflecting on how he's changed from the "China Guy" to the "Guy Who Knows China," and whether there is a way for him to ever go "home" again.

Get in touch with comments, suggestions or interview recommendations:   Twitter: @zax2000 eMail: [email protected]   Check out all of the shows in the Migration Media network on the web: www.migrationmedia.net   Please take a moment to "Like" us and leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Podbean or wherever you get your podcasts... and subscribe!

As a child growing up in the predominantly white, John Hughes-ian suburbs outside Chicago (think Ferris Bueller's Day Off, The Breakfast Club and Uncle Buck), Daphne Cheng rebelled against the expectations of her parents' native Chinese culture, but she also didn't identify with her surroundings. She chafed at taking Chinese lessons on weekends and had a tough time fitting in with the people and institutions in the area. This led to her always feeling like an outsider, neither part of her parents' culture, nor fully a part of America. So it's no wonder that today she's one of the incredible "bridge people" in China who are living connections between cultures. And for from not fitting in, she''s discovered a thriving community of fellow American-born Chinese ("ABCs") who, like her, are eager to turn their mixed heritage into a powerful lever that they can use to change the world.   

• Check out Daphne's company, Superhuman: http://www.daphnecheng.com/
• Follow her on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/daphnecheng_/
• Learn more about the concept of Ikigai (生き甲斐): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikigai
• Here's where you can find Veg Planet, the project that brought Daphne to China: http://www.weibo.com/vegplanet

  Get in touch with comments, suggestions or interview recommendations:   Twitter: @zax2000 eMail: [email protected]   Check out all of the shows in the Migration Media network on the web: www.migrationmedia.net   Please take a moment to "Like" us and leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Podbean or wherever you get your podcasts... and subscribe!

From the very start, Amelie Mongrain has been in places where she had to fit herself into her surroundings, which might be why she says that home is "wherever my two feet are." She's gone from a child of Quebecois parents growing up in rural northeastern Ontario, to a high school exchange student in Turkey, to big city life in Montreal for university, and then to Shanghai right after graduation. Then her real adventure began. From the typical party scene as one of the very few female expats in 1990s Shanghai, to building a business in the textile sector during China's manufacturing boom, to raising a son and then sending him off to university in a "home country" that he'd never lived in, she's done it all. Now she's on a whole new adventure: Empty-Nesting. It's a story of non-stop exploration and personal evolution, where even her chosen career has become a glorified excuse to travel the world and a vehicle for offering mentoring to young professionals in her field- something she never had in her early Shanghai days.   Bonus: For more insight into the unique culture of French Canadians in Ontario, check out this great story from the New York Times that was published just a few days after we recorded our interview: Ontario Has Francophones? Oui, Beaucoup, and They’re Angry   Get in touch with comments, suggestions or interview recommendations:   Twitter: @zax2000 eMail: [email protected]   Check out all of the shows in the Migration Media network on the web: www.migrationmedia.net   Please take a moment to "Like" us and leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Podbean or wherever you get your podcasts... and subscribe!