At the risk of approaching this conversation as if the question is sincere, serious even, which might be a stretch . . .
. . . a long, editorial read . . .
. . . lingering a bit in the self-identity aspect even if, as it now appears, that was a red herring.
I can guarantee that when someone asks, Canadian or otherwise, where you are from, they mean where you are ethnically from. So basically where you are "from-from" hahaha. So sadly, for e.g., even if you were born in London, they will ask where your parents are from, if you look ethnically very brown. The lucky ones are ethnically ambiguous and they get away with a lot. : D As a 3rd culture kid, I always struggled with it...do i say my birth country, my parent's country (which is what strangers expect you to answer to) or my naturalized country. These days, i only answer with what they want to hear and most often i can tell what they want to hear, and hence my answer sadly shifts.
With apologies for being rather sensitive about consistency, about logic and reason, being a bit overly picky no doubt . . .
. . . but to be clear, and to be clear with emphasis, with no apology for rejecting the prejudgment of people:
So, you can "
guarantee that when someone asks, Canadian or otherwise, where you are from, they mean where you are ethnically from," when I and other forum members (nearly if not all of whom you have never met) are asked (or doing the asking) . . .
BUT in regards to being asked YOURSELF, you can only say that "
most often i can tell what they want to hear."
"
Guarantee" is a big word. Suggests something rather close to certainty, if not absolute certainty. Frankly that, and some of the rest, signals prejudgment. Let's try to get past that.
I do not know you and in particular I do not know your intent. I doubt you meant to declare such profound bias as the words indicate. I hope you are not offended by my pointing out that such certainty, as expressed about the motives of people you have never met, is deeply prejudiced . . . which again I doubt was your intent since clearly you recognize less certainty in your own real life interactions, in which your answer "
shifts," which in turn is an acknowledgement that what underlies such questions will vary (making it logically impossible to truly guarantee what some unknown person in an unknown setting means).
In particular I understand that in a conversation in which YOU are taking part, you can "
most often" discern the meaning of the particular question being asked. Makes sense. Particularly if you are, yourself, socially aware and not prejudiced, sufficiently perceptive to read people for who they are and how they behave rather than prejudging them based on their nationality or ethnicity, let alone their skin tone. Probably makes a difference if the person asking is a border official holding your passport in their hand (who might be testing to see whether the traveler's answer is consistent with information in the passport -- remember that they can and often will ask questions for which they already know the answer), or it is a fat and somewhat lonely old man trying to make friendly conversation while standing in a long line next to you at the grocery store (pray we don't sit next to you on the bus -- only some of us are sufficiently socially perceptive and considerate enough to recognize when it's better to not pursue conversation).
Indeed, context and non-textual clues, including the tone and inflection in which the question is asked, can signal a lot that helps us understand what is actually meant (including reading between the lines, so to say) . . . but only if we can rise above our own biases sufficiently to abate our prejudices (acknowledging how difficult this can be and recognizing the vast majority of us can only hope to largely reduce the extent to which we harbour prejudices, recognizing the near impossibility of totally eliminating them).
In contrast, one must be highly skeptical that you can be so sure what someone means in scenarios in which you have virtually no information about who is asking, what the precise question is, who is being asked, or in what setting or context the question is asked. At least not without prejudging.
Leading to the OP query itself:
If you travel overseas and people there ask you where you're from, will you say Canada or the name of your old country.
I failed, initially, to frame my thoughts about this in terms of the question being asked
overseas.
And it appears I am not alone in this regard; much of what has been said in this thread seems oriented as much to being asked such a question here in Canada as it is about being asked somewhere overseas (that is, somewhere other than in the U.S. or here).
Where the question is asked, that is the particular location overseas, probably makes a big difference. Along with other context. I do not have enough worldly experience to distinguish whether "
from where" questions are more common in Madrid or Mombasa, Munich or Mumbai, Moscow or Miami, but I can readily recognize that the odds are not the same that this or that particular person is likely to be asked that question in Dublin or Glasgow, say, compared to Tokyo or Mogadishu, while for a different person the odds could be the opposite in those respective locations. That is, the place makes a difference, as does who is being asked, as well as who is asking.
Has anyone mentioned there is no one rule that fits all? Oh, yeah, I did.
Meanwhile . . . was the query really about self-identity? about dealing with an identity crisis?
. . . I am already having a bit of an identity crisis . . .
Once I better grasped the
overseas aspect of the query, I wondered why the OP's query was specifically about being asked such a question when "
overseas" (that is, not in the U.S. or Canada) while the context for the question was in reference to "
already having a bit of an identity crisis."
The latter suggests a query more about how to
personally answer a
where-are-you-from question, based on one's own sense of identity and place in the world. If the query is about one's own identity, that is a very different subject, and where the question is asked (in what country) not particularly relevant.
So I initially, apparently, misunderstood the query. My previous post, after all, was oriented to the latter, about self-identity, noting for example the dual citizens I know who carry a U.S. passport, some of whom will emphatically say they are Canadian (as in from Canada), while some very much see themselves as Americans with dual-citizenship in Canada. While the dichotomy is not so stark, and I personally know fewer, I have seen similar differences among dual citizens who can carry a British passport. Among others.
Giving more attention to the overseas setting for the question, I should have concluded my previous post:
"I am very happy to say I am a Canadian . . . no matter where I am from . . . no matter where I am asked."
That said, I fully understand and respect those who self-identify otherwise, those who identify with the country or region they consider their
homeland . . . noting that some people I know self-identify with their parent's homeland even though they themselves were born in Canada. Indeed, I have known quite a few Canadians (and Americans as well) who self-identify as "
Italians" even though they are the third or fourth generation born in Canada (or the U.S.), who will usually, typically, dodge the direct question (without being at all offended) if asked where they are "
from," by saying something like they are Italians who were born in Canada. I have known a few "
Irish" likewise, proud to be Irish even if their parents and grandparents were all born this side of the Atlantic.
In contrast, when I was living in the States (sadly I did and for far too long, plenty PTSD to show for it) I became friends with a guy born and raised in Vietnam, imprisoned there for a time; he was running a Chinese-American restaurant I frequented for lunch and his eldest daughter was in the same class as my daughter, and he was very emphatically proud to be an American. I may have asked him, at some point, where he was from, curious as to what city or part of Vietnam he lived in during the war. Getting to know one another. Reminds me of conversations I heard while attending a youth sporting event in a Brampton community centre, one person from the same country asking another person born in that country where they were "
from," curious not about which country but rather about which part of the country they were from; another asking a young person where their parents were from, again curious not about which country but which part of the country (not Canada).
Leading to real questions, real life . . .
