Friendships of Latin American Students in Brazil: From Individual Well-Being to an International Community

Abstract

The purpose of this paper was to describe the composition of the friends’ networks, the formation of friendships and the role of friends of students from other Latin American countries in Brazil. A hundred students from 14 countries, including Colombia, Peru, Argentina, Paraguay, Mexico, Venezuela, Ecuador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Chile, Dominican Republic, Bolivia, Costa Rica and Uruguay answered a questionnaire about their friendships. In total, 768 friends were mentioned, 469 of the same nationality of the student, 188 Brazilians and 111 of other nationalities. Compatriots living in their country of origin was the largest group (331), followed by Brazilians living in Brazil (182), compatriots in Brazil (85), and other foreigners in Brazil (80). Most of the students reported friendship with at least one Brazilian in the destination country (73%) and 97% sought to make friends in the destination country, developing friendships with Brazilians (89%), people from other countries (78%) and compatriots in Brazil (63%). The main difficulties in developing friendships with Brazilians were language (37%) and cultural differences (27%). The support received from the friends was recognized by 96% of the students and having friends in the destination country was considered important or very important by 95% of the participants. It can be concluded that these students present a diversified friends’ network in terms of nationality and place of residence. In Brazil, they cited more Brazilian friends than compatriots and other foreigners, indicating that the concept of homophilia is not enough to explain the composition of the friends’ network.