The assumption of privilege? Expectations on emotions when growing up in the Norwegian Foreign Service

Abstract

Based on 42 autobiographies of former Norwegian Foreign Service children, this article aims to highlight how cultural narratives of global elite migration can intersect with local family emotion-regulation practices and enter into the body of a Third Culture Kid’s experience. It asks how a mismatch between emotions as culturally expected and emotions as experienced affected them. Narrative analysis showed how the children interpreted cultural symbols into feeling-rules that created an emotional estrangement towards their caregivers as well as within themselves.