Birds of a feather end up flocking together when studying abroad. Can a university bridge the cultural differences that challenge friendships between Pacific Island students and New Zealand students?

Intercultural friendship formation is a key challenge for international students studying abroad. In an increasingly globalised world, where people regularly engage with others from different cultures, meaningful intercultural friendships are important. However, culture can pose a considerable challenge that hinders the formation of friendships between people of different cultures. This paper explores challenges and insights into developing intercultural friendships between international Pacific Island students studying in Aotearoa New Zealand and domestic New Zealand Palagi1 students. Similar to other studies, the findings in this study highlight the key challenges connected to cultural differences. These findings are surprising as New Zealand Palagi students would have gone to primary and secondary schools with Pacific Island students and should have had some contact and interactions with them and be more accustomed to cultural differences. Unique to this study is that these international Pacific Island students recognised that universities are in a prime position to champion and promote systemic interventions to assist both international and domestic students to engage with each other in order to promote cultural understanding. Overcoming intercultural friendship development challenges involves creating meaningful intercultural spaces and campus 'friendship' events to increase intercultural interactions, raise domestic students' cross-cultural awareness, and encourage reciprocal intercultural learning. Such activities are likely to enhance the overall well-being of all students and improve the internationalisation of universities with increasingly diverse student cohorts.