NAVIGATING CULTURAL IDENTITY THROUGH PEER COMMUNICATION: ACCULTURATION STRATEGIES OF INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS IN PAKISTAN

Abstract

This study focuses on the international students in international universities across Pakistan. Its core inquiry explores how this group clarifies their own cultural identity through peer interactions, and it specifically examines how two types of peer engagement, including interactions with local host-culture peers and interactions with peers who share the same home cultural origin as the international students, shape the students’ interaction patterns and the identity negotiation process that occurs during their cultural adaptation stages. This study adopts purposive sampling to select 25 international students as research samples, designs the research under the qualitative research paradigm, collects study data through semi-structured interviews, and conducts systematic analysis using thematic analysis. The study finds that international students mainly use two interaction strategies, convergence and divergence, to advance their identity negotiation. The conclusions of this study provide empirical support for Pakistani universities to optimize their international student support systems and improve the quality of cross-cultural campus integration, and also offer a locally grounded research foundation for reference in similar cross-cultural adaptation studies.