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Much of the migrant/expat dichotomy can be understood through the lens of capital flows. Migrants are barbarians from third world countries flooding into highly capitalized states like vultures, with the intention of plundering their resources. Expats come from the civilized world, and seek out regions that possess a balance of low cost of living and high quality of life, in which they then proceed to spend money (which they earn by drawing a paycheck from their first world countries). The overall result is a flow of capital out of regions of high concentrations, towards regions of low concentrations.

On the identitarian question, we need to draw a sharp distinction between nation and state. It is only following Westphalia that the two have become conflated. That is clearly no longer viable, for the technological and political reasons you explained. The nations that survive will be those that learn how to live as networked, semi-nomadic diasporas - much as the Jews have done, or the Chinese with their global archipelago of Chinatowns.

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or be civilization based empires like Medieval Christendom

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Dec 13, 2023·edited Dec 13, 2023

Good point about people commonly confusing the terms nation and nation-state. A nation is a people. Nation-state in theory is formed to protect and nurture a particular nation. Actual Americans are increasingly a nation without a state.

"Six Elements of Being American

Long before Cruse, Fischer, Kirk, or Huntington’s thoughtful commentary, the settlers themselves were aware of their heritage.

In Federalist 2, published in 1787, John Jay outlined six elements that made Americans: shared ancestry, shared language, shared religion, similar conceptions of government and law, a shared culture, and a shared historical experience. As new arrivals came, Jay said in 1797, the settler population had a responsibility to “see our people more Americanized.” The original draft of the Declaration of Independence itself was more particular than universal, with Thomas Jefferson mentioning “consanguinity,” distinguishing between “our common blood,” and that of “Scotch” and “foreign mercenaries.”"

https://amgreatness.com/2021/04/25/the-vanishing-anglo-saxon/

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This is really excellent. We're heading for a world of economic zones presided over by government officials acting like hedge fund managers (on behalf of the bankster cartel that owns the hedge fund), only with no reason for anyone to be loyal to anything except their own self-interest (and certainly no reason to be loyal to the state or its occupation government). The image that comes to mind for me is that gigantic Costco in the movie Idiocracy, only it will be covering the surface of the entire world, with no reason to travel or migrate anywhere because everyplace will be as blighted and banal as everyplace else. Anything we can do to promote the local and the particular, above the supposedly global and universal, would be advisable.

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I don't think that's sustainable. That might be the transionary period though, before loyalty blocks naturally form.

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Excellent essay, I was thinking of writing one similar to it. I think many on the right cling to the nation state in a misguided attempt to counter the left's globalism, but i think the globalist project will ultimately fail anyway. We're entering neo-medievalism. There will be many different social experiments that will rise simulatenously, Corporate city states like Prosperous in Honduras, Neo-feudal empires where oligarchs control private armies like russia, and entirely digital communities. With the fall of the nation state international religious instutions like the Catholic Church will become extremely powerful again as they have the infrastructure necessary to coordinate people across the globe. Which is poetic considering the Church's influence in the last medieval period.

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I've seen a few of your YouTube videos - cyberpunk eating globalism, hyperhuman space marines - and thought they were insightful, original, and very entertaining. I'm inclined to agree with you that neoMedievalism seems a highly probable developmental pathway. Ironically, one that both nationalists and globalists will hate. But it will certainly be a more interesting future than either of the parties want.

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Dec 13, 2023Liked by Megha Lillywhite

Hi Megha!

I do not use this site. I tried contacting you on Instagram, but you did not respond. I do not have twitter, unfortunately!

I work for Penguin Books and would like to get your new book published on with us! Let me know if you are interested. 😊

Mary.

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author

Hello Mary,

That sounds amazing! Please send me an email at classicalgirl2121@gmail.com so we can chat more about this!

Megha

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Hi Megha.

I sent you an email.

Kind regards,

Mary

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Great!

I'll pass on your details to my colleague.

Mary.

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Beautiful piece. Thankyou for writing

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Thank you!!

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Dec 5, 2023Liked by Megha Lillywhite

Always a delight to read your work Megha!

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Dec 13, 2023Liked by Megha Lillywhite

"We feel ourselves to be dealing with the wild movements of men either half brutal or wholly brutalized." From Ephraim Emerton's book "An Introduction to the Middle Ages," 1888. Emerton both describes the transitional period between the Fall of Rome and the Middle Ages and presciently documents are our own time. Rome was not invaded so much as loved to death by uncontrolled immigration. Romans were overrun by the thrid world immigration of their day.

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A brilliant quote and a very interesting theory

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Dec 13, 2023Liked by Megha Lillywhite

Many great insights here as usual. I am curious about your criticism of Nationalists. What else can an anti-globalist be at this juncture? In the West we have been almost completely colonized by global interests and it is our colonial governments that we resist. However attenuated the idea of a nation state may be, now is not the time to tear that fence down.

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This is excellent, Megha. But with all respect, I take a much harsher, pragmatic, apocalyptic view of this. What is happening to America and the West was planned a very long time ago. A certain tribe wants the Aryan race exterminated or interbred out of existence. (same thing). They want to rule a planet of deracinated, culture-less, mongrels as they are much easier to control. This satanic program and process is happening before our very eyes yet the White Man does nothing to fight his destroyers, wandering around glaze eyed in a digitized, death-dream trance. These immigration incursions should be treated for what they are, a military invasion. These non whites are coming for the White Man's women, his jobs, his homes, his land, and ultimately his lives. They should be slaughtered en masse. Then quickly the White Man should slaughter the despicable, degenerate, and treasonous politicians and bureaucrats who made it happen at the behest of their Hebraic overlords. Those demons should also share that fate but without their goyim, sycophantic henchmen, their balls will be cut off. Nature in this realm is so often stark and simple. Kill or be killed is the only truth. Everything else is a lie. Tragically, it is apparent that the men of the West have lost the will to live.

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This is nonsense, the people being imported into Europe are HARDER to controll not less. The reason why third world countries are less developed are often due to constant infighting, rebellions, coups, revolutions and so on. The "White man" forms among the most passive and subordinate cultures in the planet currently with the exception of east asians. Also if it was da joooos doing this why would they be importing the most anti-semitic people in the world (the middle east) into europe where nuclear powers are? You subjected yourself into a dumb feel good narrative with a clear earthly enemy and where your righteousness is inherent to your DNA to spare you the effort of actually having to develop it.

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That's because the goal is not consummated. They are letting them run wild to destroy white society and culture. When the last white men are killed or imprisoned and the last white women used for sexual sport by Hymie and his black and mongrel sycophants, the links of the chains will be forged and the hammer will drop. They will pacify them or exterminate them, one or the other. The White Man has been brainwashed, softened and dumbed down, over a protracted period of years. I've seen interviews with prominent Jews in Europe wherein they openly gloat that they are behind the mass non-white immigration there in order to racially and demographically change the continent. So maybe you had better ask them that question. Nuclear powers have nothing to do with it as the Controllers can shut them down or activate them at will. The white race has very clear, earthly enemies (and some not so earthly) and only a blind or ignorant man would fail to see them and their modus operandi.

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if they were that good at controling a continent of people such as Europe, you'd think they'd have better luck controling Gaza.

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They don't have to control the people of Europe. They own all of their political leaders, like you would own a dog, cat, or a horse. Just like in the U.S. and the entire West. These despicable, sycophant mouthpieces do the controlling of the indigenous populations for them.

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if it was that effective, why wouldn't it work on Gaza?

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Except the big flaw in your theory about da joos is that it’s happening in Israel too. What kind of ethnostate imports tens of thousands of Asian guest workers.

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There are almost 10 million Jews in Israel. They have under 30,000 gook guest workers. That comes to approx. 1 gook for every 320 Jews. In the U.S., and I don't give a damn what the doctored census stats say, whites are still a plurality but overall under 50% of the population and rapidly diminishing every year. Many of mixed race are counted as white by the census takers. Factor in that the Jews there don't push miscegenation between them and the Israeli population like they do between whites and non whites here, and the Asian presence there is negligible. Further, The Jews in control there, like their racial brethren here, have no qualms about throwing their fellow Yids at the base of the pyramid under the bus.

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No, there aren’t ‘10 million Jews ‘ in Israel, more like 5-6 million, and there are about 75000/100000 SE Asian and Indians in Israel and growing. Your neo-Nazi takes don’t hold up when you see that Israel is fully integrated into Globohomo.

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So-called "Nazis" are creations of the Jews and have nothing to do with Adolph Hitler and National Socialism, but I wouldn't expect you to be aware of that. The vast majority are not. In the beginning of 2023 there were approx. 9.7 million Jews in Israel. Your numbers on the Asians there are way too high and it's a safe bet they are kept strictly in line, like the predominant Ashkenazi Jews who rule there do to the Sephardic Jews, who are more like Arabs. I know some Jews miscegenate but percentage wise it is a mere pittance compared to the race mixing they foist on everyone else, particularly whites.

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Most hilariously of all , Hitler holds the world’s record for killing ‘Aryans,’ especially in Eastern Europe.

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You don't have a clue about anything. My numbers are accurate, yours are flawed. Thanks for the Jew lie about Hitler killing Aryans in Eastern Europe. I'm sure you worship the Holohoax too and shed copious tears over lampshades and bars of soap.

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Jewish intermarriage rates in The United States and Western Europe are 60-70%.

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You’re wrong as always. There are nowhere near 9.7 million Jews in Israel.

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Plenty of Jews miscegenate here and in Israel. You reside in a fantasy world politically speaking.

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You can't read or comprehend, English. I clearly said I know they miscegenate, but at a much lower rate than they promulgate for everyone else.

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Wrong again.

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Aquila non captat muscas - "The eagle does not trouble itself with flies."

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Another moron from the wignat gutter. Yeah, my name is really Rsbbi Shekrlstein, senior Researcher at the Simon Wiesenthal Center! No one has denied Jewish power nor disproportionate influence, Spergy.

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Megha, I've read a bunch of your stuff and I've generally enjoyed it but I'll try to be as nice as I can in saying that this is the weakest piece I've read on this Substack. I think you should probably have ruminated on it for a lot longer. It's chock full of sentimentalist notions that have passed for justification of immigration — the hagiography of the unknown immigrant, maybe — and Enlightenment tripe. Are we really looking to Rousseau of all people for glimpses of reality? Social contract theory is one of those obviously false fictions — like copyright — that we presuppose and tell as a "just so" story to avoid examining a more cherished preconception in danger of being washed away by real experience. Neither the state (which is not primordial) nor anyone has ever agreed to any social contract implicitly or explicitly, consciously or unconsciously. Wherever Rousseau's amusing little theory veers close to reality it's just a confused way of making the age-old observation that people demand justice, and injustice, perpetuated long enough, widely enough, and imprudently enough, leads to violence.

But that's a minor issue compared to the glaring error at the heart of the piece, which is the sentimental lionization of that shibboleth: the sanctity of the immigrant. To be frank I don't think anyone throwing around the word "assimilation" has much clue of what it means, and I'm quite sick of hearing it. The "assimilated immigrant" is a mythical creature no one has ever laid eyes on, except in the fevered and confused imaginations of sclerotic and demented Westerners who think the sum total of human social existence is liking the same food and voting the right way. No, I'm sorry, the Algerian is not going to transmute into an Irishman no matter how much time he spends in Ireland (and even if magically some of the Irish's Irishness rubbed off on him that would surely mean he was rubbing off his Algerianness on them too, making them less Irish and him less Algerian, and destroying the identity of both), and no matter how many people feel the need to put the word "even" in front of it like God put a processing time on the transmutation. The cliché is tired but it serves to illustrate the absurdity: how could one say the mule is not a horse "even" though he has spent many years in the stables? Why, even his mother was a horse! I've watched videos of dogs that behaved like cats after being raised among them or birds acting like dogs after the same yet I never saw anyone talking about the very oddly canine cat that pants and wags its tail or the amazing new dog that could fly. Yes, the Englishman from Detroit is indisputably more English than the Indian from Stratfordshire, no matter how much he (presently) personally enjoys Shakespeare or Dickens. If the Indian developed a deep distaste for Shakespeare would he suddenly and magically become less English? The whole paradigm is absurd.

The question really ought to be regarded as insane, at least as insane as questioning the rationality of having children or living at all. Instead we ought to be asking why everyone is so eager to reduce human identity and belonging to unimportant matters of preference like taste in literature, domicile, or dress. Old rhetorical apologists for the destruction of human sociability (because that is the result of destruction of identity) used to claim that descent was some sort of "accident of birth" (as if I could be the same person and yet have a different mother or father) and yet where your parents happened to end up when you were born and while you were being raised is somehow a very important marker of what you are and not an accident at all.

The obsession with "values" is equally disturbing. Not one real human identity was formed out of "shared values," and to the extent anyone tried it led to bloody fanaticism and the worst excesses of the 20th century. Certainly no one particularly moral had an identity based on something so voluntary. Marxists have been waiting decades for a shared class identity to emerge and that's a much more realistic prospect, yet no one seems to have taken notice of that abject failure. If "value-identity" was real then the feminist War of the Sexes would be a literal reality, and people would feel entirely comfortable teaming up with complete strangers against their neighbors and family on the basis of "values." You yourself once wrote in another piece that we ought to think less, but our identity, the single most rooted part of our existences, is somehow something based primarily on opinions and considered doctrine? It isn't, as anyone who's had rambunctious and lively extended family get-togethers really ought to know. And we ought to be thankful for that! The sort of ideological thought-policing implicit in this "values-identity" paradigm would be nightmarish. We really ought to ask ourselves why people (usually Republican types) are so obsessed with making "values" and "culture" (which they don't understand) the height of importance. Why on Earth would it matter at all that some white girl or English poet "understands" "Indian culture" better than the Indians? A falconer understands his birds better than they understand themselves but he's not going to sprout wings, develop a beak, or, most importantly, convince anyone else that yes, he really can perch on their arms and catch their quarries better than the other, lesser falcon-y, less understanding falcons. Is time spent navel gazing meant to make me more me? Why on Earth should I care how well some foreigner can "assimilate" and ape the ways of my people? What argument for letting him in to live near me and take the space of some of my kin is that?

Now, some nonwhites are happy to jump on the bandwagon of claiming that anyone can be an Englishman, or Irishman, or German, or American if he just fulfills [insert your preferred set of arbitrary criteria here] since the simple underlying reality of group competition always at play means he's weakening and destroying the competitor groups of actual Englishmen, Irishmen, Germans, or Americans, but the insidious logic at play comes for us all. If anyone could be a Pole, anyone could be a Zulu or an Arab or a Punjabi and what anyone can be no one essentially is, and it becomes fundamentally not very much more important than whether you are a member of the chess club, the Freemasons, or any other voluntary association. What can be chosen can be unchosen. Usually immigration legislation was advanced by who else but immigrant stock. Doubtlessly foolish people would declare that Emmanuel Celler and Philip Hart were "assimilated immigrants." Was it merely coincidence then that it was they who pushed what they did? Do we really believe that a trueborn son of Virginia with pure Colonial blood in his veins would have done the same thing? Do we believe a population of such men would have voted for it? Or a government of such men would have enacted it? Maybe you do, but if you do it is a surely amazing coincidence that such bad (and, may I say it?, anti-native) policy is nearly universally advanced and enacted by people quite conscious of their not-quite-nativeness. One might be tempted to be facetious and call it a mystery, that tendency.

Lastly, I was quite perplexed by your implication of hypocrisy in nationalists if they're ruled by governments that hate them and want to see their nations destroyed. Are you under the mistaken modern impression that "nation" is synonymous with "country" or "state"? A nationalist is not a state or polity advocate. The mere fact of bad, anti-national rule is what gives nationalists a big impetus. What about "your own" (is it?) governments selling "you" out and conspiring to destroy "your" families makes nationalism not valuable? Wouldn't a government that claimed to be yours conspiring to destroy your family make your advocacy for your family all the more admirable and precious?

Let's abandon this ingrained and incessant need to let in strangers, give away the patrimony passed down to us to them, and praise how well they can ape unimportant customs or make us money. Maybe it's not nice to talk about kicking them out or mean to say that they aren't really English or American just because they or their forebears have been around a long time (not that a century is really a long time) but it's the truth nonetheless. Let's abandon this fear of acknowledging that identity is essential and not accidental or voluntary, as well as the fear of advocating for ourselves and our own kind rather than others. Let's abandon the ridiculous pretended fiction everyone maintains of ethnic or national or essential transmutation, that obviously the Algerian can become Irish or the Indian English or the mule a horse. The emperor has no cloths; the transmutation never happens; the mule is still a mule and not a horse. If you're willing to go so far as to advocate for the descendants of yourself, or your parents, or your grandparents, there's no reason not to go back further, unless you think an intermarrying village of one family is really a viable social structure in this world. Barring that, teaming up with your twelfth cousins against the rest of the world doesn't seem like such a bad idea.

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Tbh I stopped reading this comment after you compared human beings from different cultures as entirely different species. I think it would do well for you to travel a little bit and meet more people.

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That sounds like an unflattering emotional reaction, since I assume you understand how an analogy works. Would you prefer the analogy that a man isn't going to become a woman no matter how many years he acts like one, no matter if he is raised as one, and no matter how well he manages to fool people into thinking he is one? Or would you have read it if I had used different dog breeds as my example instead? The principle the analogy was intended to illustrate remains the same. A golden retriever isn't going to become a great dane or border collie no matter how long it spends among them.

Perhaps you could enlighten me about the magical property humans, uniquely among all life, possess that renders their unchosen attributes like sex and heritage meaningless. Could you give me one historical example of a flourishing human society that came together not on the basis of relation, history, or heritage but "values"? Or give me an example of healthy and functional human beings who had no regard for their own heritage?

I'm not quite sure why so many people are so emotionally attached to silly notions of ethnic transmutation or turning identity into a political party, but those shibboleths remain false nonetheless. Don't you think it's rather sad to reduce identity to the sort of food or entertainment you like or this nebulous "values" thing? Sadder still that apparently these "values" are more important than any real relation to other human beings? That what matters is not any people or their real lives and social relations but how well they fulfill cultural stereotypes you happen to like?

This radical anti-essentialism that tells people identity isn't inherent but chosen is a supreme disservice to every human being on the planet. It's dehumanizing. I suspect I've probably met more people with more diverse backgrounds than yourself and not one of them has benefitted from having their identity stripped away to pretend that if they just act like some other group of people they'll "be" (keyword) one of them. In fact they're all rather broken people for having their identities destroyed. What service is it to anyone? I'm very sorry that you're still a part of that lamentable process.

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There will always be states, history attests to this, and they are simply a reflection of man's social nature. A state in the most simple terms is just a hierarchical social network of people that have various (private, mutual) relations with each other, which serves to provide for the various needs of life. The strict dichotomy between State and Society (public and private spheres) largely originates from the era of European Liberalism, which reached its height during the 18th and 19th centuries.

The social contract theories are all more or less elaborate fictions from that bygone time, made with the intent of justifying an imaginary public establishment as the basis for the state. However, states can be perfectly well explained on the basis of private relations, property and laws alone, as e.g Haller has shown, without making any resort to social contracts, monopoly of violence or any other such nefarious concepts.

When it comes to immigration, one has to in some ways appreciate the irony of our situation, namely, that in these times marked by historically unprecedented levels of mass migration to the western states, these same western states are worse equiped for dealing with these flows of people at the political and social level, than perhaps at any previous point in their history. This is largely due to the mass democratic and egalitarian-pluralistic texture of western nations, wherein an immigrant is expected to receive the same rights and attain political as well as economic parity with that of the host population. Actually achieving this in practice is a herculean task which in the end only serves to increase the extent of the social state apparatus at the expense of the regular taxpayer.

I look positively at the Gulf States approach to immigration, which I believe points towards the future.

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This is a dynamite essay. I enjoyed your writing style. Look for to reading others. Unfortunately most people engage in their "culture " through performance, a role play if you will. Western society manufacturers inauthenticity wholesale, from art to relationships, valies to culture.

The only thing i would like to add to is from this line:.

"The world fragments and I believe this is healthy and natural. "

I completely agree. Humans are a social animal that needs space, but it returns to the fold on occasion. Collectivization is unnatural for us. But what is transpiring, the shift from communities to networks, echo chambers and digital islands, is not happening organically.

Thank you for the great essay.

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amazing read.

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Social Engineering by rich and powerful Elites has eroded the Nation State to suit their purposes. We can only expect this trend and the inevitable depopulation that comes with it to increase until it reaches it's conclusion in a One World Government, owned and operated by the Elite, for their benefit.

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Not sure how Dubai is doing better than the West. Many modern Arab nations are very impressive, but they are still copying Western culture, science and technology. But as you point out, globalization has negative consequences (not just positive). Fascinating article, good topic.

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Where does the term "third culture kid" come from?

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Never mind. I looked it up. Thanks.

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