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.

跨文化友谊的形成是留学国际学生面临的主要挑战。在一个日益全球化的世界中，人们经常与来自不同文化背景的人交往，有意义的跨文化友谊至关重要。但是，文化可能构成巨大的挑战，阻碍了不同文化的人们之间建立友谊。本文探讨了发展在新西兰Aotearoa的国际太平洋岛屿学生与新西兰本地的Palagi之间的跨文化友谊的挑战和见解¹学生。与其他研究类似，本研究的结果突出了与文化差异有关的主要挑战。这些发现令人惊讶，因为新西兰Palagi学生将与太平洋岛国学生一起上中小学，并且应该与他们进行一些接触和互动，并且更加习惯于文化差异。这项研究的独特之处在于，这些国际太平洋岛国学生认识到大学在倡导和促进系统性干预以协助国际和国内学生相互参与以促进文化理解方面处于首要地位。克服跨文化友谊发展的挑战包括创造有意义的跨文化空间和校园“友谊”活动，以增加跨文化互动，提高国内学生的跨文化意识，并鼓励相互的跨文化学习。此类活动可能会改善所有学生的整体福祉，并改善学生群体日益多样化的大学的国际化水平。