How do multicultural university students define and

make sense of intercultural contact?

A qualitative study

Rona Tamiko Halualani *

Department of Communication Studies, San Jose State University, One Washington Square, San Jose, CA 95192-0112, United States

Abstract

In a departure from past intercultural contact research, this study examines how culturally different students define, make sense

of, and experience intercultural interaction at a multicultural university in the U.S. By employing a qualitative in-depth interviewing

method, the author conducts 80 interviews with students over a 3-year period in which they present their own definitions and

accounts of intercultural interaction on campus. She finds that multicultural university students have complex and multilayered

interpretations of intercultural interaction that are shaped in part by surrounding ideologies of diversity, specific definitions of

culture, and perceptions of the nationality, race, or ethnicity of their interactants.

# 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Intercultural contact; Intercultural interaction; Multicultural university students’ definitions; Qualitative method

The multicultural university is a place where students of various cultural backgrounds are presumed to interact with

one another. Such a context has been identified as one of the last settings that house individuals from diverse

backgrounds together in one place (Halualani, Chitgopekar, Morrison, & Dodge, 2004; Jackman & Crane, 1986).

Scholars have become particularly interested in this context with regard to the following questions (Halualani et al.,

2004; Salz & Trubowitz, 1997; Sampson, 1986; Smith, 1994): To what extent are culturally different students

engaging in intercultural interaction at the multicultural university? What characterizes such intercultural interactional

experiences? These questions, while important, cannot be fully answered without posing a more fundamental

question: How do multicultural university students define and make sense of intercultural interaction? While there

exist a few studies that have examined the frequency of intercultural interaction at the multicultural university (see for

e.g., Halualani et al., 2004; Wright, Aron, McLaughlin-Volpe, & Ropp, 1997), these investigations have presumed that

there is a single and widely shared definition and experience of intercultural interaction among students from various

cultures. As a result, past intercultural contact studies have failed to notice a very important point: the ‘‘what,’’ ‘‘how,’’

and ‘‘why’’ of intercultural interaction at the multicultural university can never be fully known without asking the

students how they define, experience, and interpret such interactions in their own words and in context of their lives.

This essay uses qualitative data to answer this fundamental question surrounding intercultural interaction among

multicultural university students. I argue that multicultural university students have complex and multilayered

interpretations of intercultural interaction that are shaped in part by societal views of diversity and specific definitions

www.elsevier.com/locate/ijintrel

Available online at www.sciencedirect.com

International Journal of Intercultural Relations 32 (2008) 1–16

* Tel.: +1 408 924 5380; fax: +1 408 924 5396.

E-mail address: halualani@yahoo.com.

0147-1767/$ – see front matter # 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

doi:10.1016/j.ijintrel.2007.10.006

of culture. In this study, I employ a qualitative in-depth interviewing method and collect interview data from 80

students of varied backgrounds at a multicultural university and ask them for their own definitions and accounts of

intercultural interaction on campus.

Through such means, I find two recurring themes that illustrate these complex definitions and interpretations of

intercultural interaction. First, interviewees equate being among or within a demographically diverse campus as

engaging in intercultural interaction. Meaning, one’s presence in (and proximity to) an area with different cultures is

signified as having actual intercultural interaction with these group members. Here students generalize and

overestimate the amount of intercultural interactions they have on campus without specifying the actual interactions.

They claim that they have so much intercultural interaction that they ‘‘forget’’ or ‘‘don’t notice’’ them anymore. Such a

generalization of intercultural interaction in terms of campus demographic diversity demonstrates the long reach of the

societal construction of diversity and its immediate association with intercultural interaction engagement. Second,

interviewees primarily define intercultural interaction to be exchanges between individuals of different national,

racial, and ethnic backgrounds but delineate such exchanges to take place completely out of their own personal

friendship or social networks. Here intercultural interactions occur between strangers in forced settings and are

deemed fleeting, rare, and separate from their everyday lives. While they deem intercultural interactions to be

exchanges with nationally different students, they deny that their friendships with ethnically, racially, or nationally

different persons in their personal social networks are at all intercultural.

This essay begins with a review of the intercultural contact literature in which I discuss the limitations of past

research on intercultural contact. More specifically, I argue that extant research fails to uncover how individuals define,

construct, and make sense of intercultural interaction in their own words and by their own interpretive logics. Next, I

delineate my in-depth interviewing method, sampling procedure for my interviews, and framework for data analysis.

An analysis and discussion of the recurring themes that emerge in the interviews with multicultural university students

are then presented. Lastly, I present key conclusions and implications that this research yields for future directions

regarding intercultural contact and the multicultural university.

1. Intercultural contact research: a review

Intergroup and intercultural contact scholars have amassed an expansive body of research about the conditions

upon which culturally different groups interact and perceive each other (see for e.g., Allport, 1954/1979; Amir, 1976;

Brewer & Brown, 1998; Cook, 1985; Dovidio, Gaertner, & Kawakami, 2003; Pettigrew, 1986; Stephan, 1987; Stephan

& Bingham, 1985; Williams, 1947). The primary focus of this research has been on examining the relationship

between intergroup contact, conditions for contact, and prejudice reduction and attitude change. While contributing

many valuable insights to our understanding of intergroup relations, this field of work, however, has not yet addressed

two major limitations. First, scholars have largely based their research on predetermined and externally imposed

constructs of what intercultural contact is, and most notably, on a construct that emphasizes interaction under specific

‘‘ideal’’ conditions. Second, intercultural contact researchers have used methods that investigate intercultural contact

primarily in terms of (a) replicable/controlled behaviors (via experiments) and (b) generalized perceptions or attitudes

towards a group (via surveys of intergroup/racial attitudes). I discuss these limitations and the need to examine how

individuals in real and everyday settings define what intercultural interaction means for them and why.

1.1. Limitation #1: Intercultural contact as idealized and optimal

The majority of intercultural contact research has identified and tested taxonomies of conditions (‘‘contact should

be voluntary,’’ ‘‘contact should be regular and frequent,’’ ‘‘contact should be between individuals of similar

socioeconomic status’’) that help to shape positive intercultural contact (Allport, 1954/1979; Amir, 1969, 1976;

Stephan, 1987). These conditions have been analyzed in terms of how, when, and which combinations are necessary in

order to achieve the ‘‘best’’ type of contact that would lead to maximum prejudice reduction (Dixon, Durrheim, &

Tredoux, 2005). As a result of this focus, intercultural contact studies have overemphasized only the ‘‘right’’ or ‘‘most

optimal’’ conditions for contact. Meaning, researchers have only pursued knowledge about contact that is

encapsulated by a set of best possible conditions.

While this stands as an applaudable effort in intergroup research, it, however, can be counter-productive to the

aims of the entire field. The goal of identifying conditions, variables, and processes that lead to prejudice

R.T. Halualani / International Journal of Intercultural Relations 32 (2008) 1–162

reduction has over time inadvertently redefined intercultural contact to be one that is occurring in specific optimal

(and often rarely occurring) conditions. As a result, such research may not be as applicable for understanding real,

everyday contexts of contact found within individuals’ lives (Amir, 1969; Bramel, 2004; Dixon et al., 2005;

Ellison & Powers, 1994; Jackman & Crane, 1986; Pettigrew & Troop, 2000; Smith, 1994). According to several

intergroup contact scholars (Connolly, 2000; Dovidio et al., 2003; Jackman & Crane, 1986), intercultural contact

in real-life, desegregated contexts is unpredictable and filled with many different and contradictory variables that

depend on the cultural groups involved and their histories, experiences, and the surrounding sociopolitical

environment. By directing our efforts at investigating idealized intercultural contact that may occur infrequently,

we have in large part overlooked how individuals and cultural groups actually experience intercultural contact in

the messiness of real life (Connolly, 2000; Dixon et al., 2005; Pettigrew & Troop, 2000). At the very least, it is

important to engage individuals’ actual experiences and accounts of intercultural contact in order to determine if

such contact is constituted by any of the theorized (‘‘optimal’’) conditions and in what combinations, and if not,

why this might be the case.

1.2. Limitation #2: Methodological constraints on intercultural contact research

In addition to creating an idealized definition of intercultural contact, intergroup studies have also adopted

experimental and survey research methods in order to investigate the necessary precursors for positive intercultural

contact. Controlled and replicable experiments that are conducted in artificial, laboratory-like settings, have

historically punctuated the field of intergroup studies (see e.g., Brown & Albee, 1966; Butler & Wilson, 1978;

Desforges et al., 1991; Gaertner, Mann, Dovidio, Murrell, & Pomare, 1990; Gaertner, Mann, Murrell, & Dovidio,

1989). These experimental studies have attempted to manipulate and isolate several conditions of the contact

hypothesis and examine the subsequent effects. In so doing, such experiment-based research has reproduced the field’s

optimal definition of intercultural contact (Connolly, 2000; Pettigrew & Troop, 2000). Although valuable in their own

right, contact experiments beg the question: What do we really know about intercultural contact as it plays out in the

context of people’s complex lives (Bramel, 2004; Dovidio et al., 2003)?

Survey studies of intercultural contact (see e.g., Ellison & Powers, 1994; Hallinan & Williams, 1989; Robinson

& Preston, 1976; Sigelman & Welch, 1993; Tsukashima & Montero, 1976; Wright et al., 1997) also rely on and

promote the contact hypothesis’ construct of optimal contact. These studies use survey instruments that are large

scale (often nationwide telephone polls) and query about individuals’ generalized perceptions of their

intercultural contact and other cultural groups. Responses to these ‘‘generalized’’ survey items have revealed

important insights about intercultural contact. However, by framing the notion of intercultural contact as

generalized perceptions via surveys, scholars have accessed precisely that: individuals’ general estimates of

‘‘contact’’ in the broadest sense and their overall impressions of other groups as ‘‘masses.’’ In other words, these

survey items, while revealing aspects of attitudinal leanings towards different cultures, may not tap into

individuals’ lived subjective accounts, sensemakings, and concrete experiences with members of these groups.

Such untapped information would indeed shed light on individuals’ attitudes and predispositions about culturally

different groups and intercultural contact.

Taken together, (a) intergroup scholars’ dependency on an idealized, optimal definition of intercultural contact and

(b) the methodological overreliance on controlled ‘‘laboratory’’ experiments and preconceived large-scale survey

instruments that measure general impressions of intercultural contact, illustrate that the field needs to examine

participants’ own context-specific and contingent definitions and experiences of intercultural contact (Bramel, 2004;

Dixon et al., 2005; Pettigrew & Troop, 2000). One area of knowledge that can be gained from this focus revolves

around how, why, and the extent to which intercultural contact takes place (or does not) from the perspective of the

participants involved. Learning these details will help to ferret out the context-specific and culturally embedded ways

in which individuals themselves construct the meaning of intercultural contact.

One specific setting in which understanding how individuals define intercultural contact may be insightful, is the

multicultural university. Today’s multicultural universities are characterized by dramatic demographic shifts in the

ethnic and racial composition of students (Applebone, 1995; Chang, Witt, Jones, & Hakuta, 2003; Salz & Trubowitz,

1997). While there are few studies on the quantity and quality of actual intercultural contact among culturally different

students (with the exception of Chavous, 2005; Halualani et al., 2004), there are even fewer investigations of how

students define intercultural interaction within the multicultural university setting. Because of this paucity of research,

R.T. Halualani / International Journal of Intercultural Relations 32 (2008) 1–16 3

we have little to no information about how students perceive and experience intercultural contact in campus life. Thus,

this study aims to examine the following research questions:

(a) How do students define intercultural interaction at a multicultural university?

(b) How do students make sense of and interpret their own experiences of intercultural contact on-campus?

2. Method: Qualitative in-depth interviewing and meanings around intercultural contact

This study employs a qualitative in-depth interviewing method to examine students’ definitions and sensemakings

of intercultural contact at a multicultural university. According to Lofland and Lofland (1995) and Rossman and Rallis

(1998), in-depth interviewing is useful to access individuals’ subjective constructions of their social world. An in-

depth interview represents a ‘‘guided conversation whose goal is to elicit from the interviewee rich, detailed materials

. . . and discover the [interviewee]’s experience of a particular topic or situation’’ (Rossman & Rallis, 1998, p. 18).

Through an in-depth interviewing method, a researcher can examine how a concept is defined and understood in

context of the interviewee’s life conditions and experiences.

2.1. Setting, procedures, and participants

My study was conducted over a 3-year period from 2002 to 2005. The setting for this study is a 4-year large,

comprehensive public university in the Western region of the U.S. with 29,000 students. Such a targeted site is deemed

as having a uniquely diverse study body as compared to the ethnic/racial demographic profiles of other equivalent

universities across the U.S. For example, U.S. News and World Reports list this university-of-focus as one of the

fifteen most demographically diverse terminal Masters degree-conferring institutions in the Pacific region (U.S. News

& World Reports, 2007). Here such hailed diversity encompasses the following racial/ethnic composition percentages

for its student body: 30% Asian American, 18% Hispanic, 29% White/European American, 8% Black/African

American, 5% Pacific Islander, and 10% Multiracial.

In addition, the institution-of-focus is characterized by a substantial commuter and working class student

population. Approximately 40% of the student body lives off of campus (with 60% on campus). Many of these students

live at home with their parents and or travel long distances to attend classes because of the region’s expensive housing

prices and high cost of living. Moreover, students at this university work an average of 25 h a week in addition to

carrying a full load (16 units) of coursework.

Because of the aforementioned features, it became important to locate an interview sample that touched upon

several key attributes of the university’s student population in terms of the dramatic diversity demographics, the

commuter and resident segments, and the large number of working students. Thus, in the first 2 weeks of the semester,

student interviewees were solicited for their participation in five different General Education courses across five

different disciplines (Social Sciences, Business, Science, Engineering, and Humanities) and four different college

units. (Communication Studies and Psychology courses were specifically avoided so as to not have student

participants who may already be knowledgeable about intercultural contact research.) Such participation was not

linked to any credit-bearing units or extra credit points; it was completely voluntary. Interested students were asked to

fill out a half-page questionnaire that posed questions in terms of the following demographic variables: (a) gender, (b)

age, (c) racial/ethnic background, (d) major, (e) year in school or class status, (f) commuter or resident status, (g)

number of hours work on/off campus per week, (h) country of birth, (i) number of years in the U.S., and (j)

socioeconomic status. In addition, students were asked to provide an email address for potential future contact. Along

with two research assistants, I collected 450 questionnaires over a 16-month period and sorted these out based on the

variables listed above. (Each collected questionnaire included the student respondent’s email address.) The goal was to

narrow down from the 450 questionnaires to a sample of interview participants that varied as much as possible across

the attributes of gender, ethnicity, race, class year, commuter/resident status, number of years living in the U.S., and

socioeconomic status. One hundred and forty-nine questionnaires were ‘‘pulled’’ and marked as potential interviewee

participants for the study. These potential interviewees were emailed and asked for their participation in a 2 h in-depth

interview about their communication encounters on campus. Eighty students responded and agreed to participate in

the study. I conducted and audiotaped all 80 interviews by myself in a conference room in my department. Interviews

took place over 20 months.

R.T. Halualani / International Journal of Intercultural Relations 32 (2008) 1–164

The demographics of the accessed interviewee sample include a close to equal gender split with 38 females and 42

males (see Table 1). Of the 80 interviewees, 43 live on campus and 37 live off of campus in nearby cities. Each

interviewee worked an average of 25 h per week in addition to taking a full load of classes. There is also a diversified

representation of class levels among the student participants: 18 first-year students, 21 second-year students, 21 third-

year students, and 20 fourth-year students. Almost half of the sample (38) was born in the U.S. while the remaining

(42) had immigrated to the U.S. within the last 12 years. The racial/ethnic breakdown of the student interviewees

includes the following: 21 Asians/Asian Americans, 18 Latinos, 20 Whites/European Americans, 14 Blacks/African

Americans, and 7 Multiracial (of more than one race or ethnicity). The socioeconomic background spanned several

economic class brackets: 29 in the $31,000–$60,000 range; 28 in the $61,000–$90,000 range; and 23 in the $91,000–

$120,000.

2.2. Measures

The interviewing question protocol revolved around six major semi-structured questions and statements (which

range from unstructured or ‘‘grand tour,’’ application, and elaboration questions/statements) that elicited participants’

own definitions and interpretations of intercultural contact. Rather than ask interviewees about their intercultural

contact experiences with specific groups (for e.g., ‘‘How are your interactions with Black students?’’), I opened up

each interview session by posing a general, unstructured, or ‘‘grand tour’’ statement (‘‘Tell me about the kind of

intercultural interaction you have had on this campus’’) to introduce the topic of intercultural interaction and

immediately draw out how the participant experiences the topic in her/his life. I was interested in how students initially

frame intercultural interaction from the outset and how this may tie in or differ from later queries about what

intercultural contact is. (Oftentimes, what is revealed first is the more deeply felt sentiment.) I then asked the following

question: ‘‘Think about the notion of intercultural interaction. What does this mean to you?’’ This construct is aimed at

uncovering how student interviewees internalize and make sense of the notion of intercultural interaction in their own

words.

Next, I posed application or example questions that queried about students’ experiences with intercultural contact.

For instance, the question – ‘‘Could you give me an example of an on-campus intercultural interaction from your own

experience? Walk me through this interaction (With whom, where, when, how)’’ – provides insight into how the

interviewee connotatively links the concepts of intercultural interaction to her/his personal experience. This item also

sheds light on what ‘‘counts’’ as intercultural interaction to interviewees in the university context. Moreover, it serves

as an interesting point of comparison in which the general sensemakings of intercultural interaction can be compared

R.T. Halualani / International Journal of Intercultural Relations 32 (2008) 1–16 5

Table 1

Demographics of interview sample

Gender Females (38; 47%)

Males (42; 53%)

Commuter/resident status Commuter (lives off-campus) (43; 54%)

Resident (lives on-campus) (37; 46%)

Class level First-year students (18; 23%)

Second-year students (21; 26%)

Third-year students (21; 26%)

Fourth-year students (20; 25%)

Relation to the U.S. Born in the U.S. (38; 48%)

Immigrated to the U.S. within the last 10 years (42; 52%)

Racial/ethnic background White/European Americans (20; 25%)

Latino/as (18; 22%)

Asians/Asian Americans (21; 26%)

Blacks/African Americans (14; 17%)

Multiracial (7; 10%)

Socioeconomic status $31,000–$60,999 (29; 36%)

$61,000–$90,999 (28; 35%)

$91,000–$120,999 (23; 29%)

to the application of intercultural interaction to their lives. Students’ examples of intercultural interaction also

contextualize their understandings of intercultural interaction.

The next posed statement – ‘‘Describe an example of an interaction you’ve had on campus that is NOT

intercultural’’ (also posed as the question: ‘‘What is NOT intercultural interaction to you?’’) – functions as yet another

comparison point that in conjunction with the query about a personal intercultural interaction example, delineates how

the interviewees define what is and what is not intercultural interaction. Knowing what is and what is not intercultural

interaction enables us to see more closely the scope and limits of how interviewees define intercultural interaction. It is

helpful to pose concept-negative and concept-positive questions in order to ferret out the definitional and interpretive

boundaries one ascribes to the concept-of-focus. I was also curious to interrogate what ‘‘intercultural’’ means for

multicultural university students.

Finally, I ended each interview session by asking participants in two separate queries to detail a positive and negative

intercultural interaction that they have had on campus. Here I dig deeper into students’ valorizations and evaluative

judgments about their past intercultural interaction and what constitutes the ‘‘positive’’ and ‘‘negative’’ aspects for them.

Here I set out to examine which aspects of intercultural interaction (for e.g., the interactant’s style or personality, the

cultural background of the interactant, the communication process, outcome, and setting) students identify as ‘‘positive’’

and ‘‘negative’’ and the meanings attributed to the terms ‘‘positive’’ and ‘‘negative.’’ Responses to these constructs can

reveal the comfort and danger zones of individuals as experienced in past intercultural interactions.

2.3. Analysis of data

After all 80 interviews were completed, the interview audiotapes were transcribed. Then, I asked two academic

researchers located at different institutions and who are situated in the disciplinary areas of the Social Sciences and

Education to join me in coding all the interview transcripts. I made such a request of these researchers in order to

counteract my own familiarity with the topic and research area and to glean as many different insights on the emergent

interview themes. The three of us first coded the data transcripts privately and independent of one another. We agreed

to use a coding scheme in which we looked for emergent themes, or recurring domains of meanings across the

interviews (Lofland & Lofland, 1995; Rossman & Rallis, 1998). More specifically, we identified emergent themes in

terms of the following foci:

(a) how students referred to, talked about, and recalled intercultural interactions;

(b) how students defined what intercultural interaction meant for them (what it is and what it is not);

(c) how students interpreted their own past intercultural interactions;

(d) what students deem as ‘‘positive’’ versus ‘‘negative’’ intercultural interactions;

(e) any patterns between the above meanings or themes found and the demographic variables of the sample.

After independently coding the data, each of us compiled an analytic memo in which recurring (the most frequent)

themes were identified and described (Lofland & Lofland, 1995; Rossman & Rallis, 1998). Lastly, we met in person

and shared our codings with one another. Together, we identified significant themes and patterns of meaning as those

that we all had independently noted and upon which we had unanimous coder agreement. Thus, this study features the

most noteworthy student constructions around intercultural interact as unanimously noted by three separate coders.

Due to space constraints, I incorporate only those interview excerpts that best illustrate the emergent themes found.

3. Interview analysis and results: multicultural university students’ constructions and sensemakings of

intercultural contact

My interview sessions with 80 multicultural university students of varied backgrounds underscore two key

recurring themes about how they define and understand intercultural interaction.

3.1. Theme #1: Intercultural interaction as ‘‘presence’’: intercultural interaction as equivalent to being on a

demographically diverse campus

As the first significant theme, 54% (43) of the multicultural university student interviewees generalize and equate

intercultural interaction to being on a diverse campus as opposed to personally engaging in actual intercultural

R.T. Halualani / International Journal of Intercultural Relations 32 (2008) 1–166

interaction. Specifically, when asked about their own experiences of intercultural interaction on campus, many

students initially had difficulty in recounting specific personal accounts of such on-campus contact. At first, I thought

that this could be explained by the difficulty in recounting past intercultural interactions, especially if one has either

not had many within the last year or conversely, has had so many of these types of exchanges on a daily basis. However,

closer examination of data transcripts reveals that these interviewees equated the notion of having intercultural

interaction with merely being on and a part of a demographically diverse campus.

All participants included in this theme could not recall a specific intercultural interaction experience they have had

on their university campus. These respondents never actually discussed one specific example of an intercultural

interaction that they have had on campus (one interviewee commented, ‘‘How do you pick just out of the thousands

I’ve had?’’). This did not worry or concern my interviewees. Instead, they justified this difficulty by claiming that

intercultural interaction was always happening just by the fact that there existed a diverse student body and that they

likely do not take note of them anymore because they occur all the time. ‘‘Lee,’’ a Vietnamese/Chinese male

sophomore, pointed out, ‘‘That’s impossible . . . to tell you of just one intercultural interaction. I feel like I am always

doing it. No lie, we all are. It’s what you do here at [name of university].’’ In this vein, students even estimated that they

had many (‘‘more than ten’’), as opposed to few, intercultural interactions on a daily basis. Several specified that they

had ‘‘at least 50 to 60 intercultural interactions on campus per week,’’ ‘‘interactions in the hundreds over two or three

months,’’ and ‘‘triple’’ what they had in high school or in their hometown. Students interpreted the great amount of

intercultural interactions they had on campus to be the direct result of being at a multicultural university. They claimed

that being a part of a multicultural university ‘‘guaranteed’’ higher frequencies of intercultural interaction. As

‘‘Renee,’’ a ‘‘Jewish student of the arts,’’ pointed out, ‘‘The minute you walk on to this campus, like the first day you

start going here, you are in this whole world of different people, lots of cultures you don’t even know about, and

intercultural exchanges happening every second.’’ Thus, we see the immediate association of presence in or proximity

to a context of demographic diversity as intercultural contact.

There are other representative examples of this association. For instance, ‘‘Kelly,’’ an African American

sophomore, explains, ‘‘It just doesn’t stand out anymore to me; I have intercultural conversations all the time, culture is

everywhere here, you’re in class with everybody from different places, you hear different languages when you are

walking from your car to your class, it’s totally normal here, you kinda forget about the whole culture thing.’’ ‘‘L.J.,’’

an Asian Indian male student who lives on campus, reiterates ‘‘Kelly’’’s point by claiming that he does not notice the

diversity on campus anymore.

‘‘I don’t. It’s not really unusual here. Everybody here is from somewhere else, we are from across the globe, we

speak like two or three languages minimum, we look different. I don’t even notice it anymore. I am sitting next to

people in class who are different from me. I walk by this guy and he’s from another country. I would be here all

day telling you about all of them, they’re too many to count.’’

‘‘Kelly’’ and ‘‘L.J.’’ demonstrate that they associate intercultural interaction with being a student at a multicultural

university. Here they make sense of and signify a personal and concrete experience on a general, abstract, and removed

level. For instance, ‘‘Kelly’’ explains that ‘‘culture’’ by way of her diverse peers, is everywhere and saturates the

university context so much that she ‘‘forgets’’ it. By extension, then, if culture does not stand out, then intercultural

interaction with others also does not get noticed and becomes merely ordinary. ‘‘Kelly’’ and ‘‘L.J.’’ point out how they

attend classes with students from different cultures, hear different languages being spoken around them, and walk or

live alongside culturally different students. What is striking here is that while students make this association between

being a part of a diverse campus and having actual intercultural interaction, many still did not specify or detail concrete

intercultural interactions they have had with their culturally different peers (they could not name their interactants or

recount any specifics of brief or ongoing encounters with culturally different persons). Instead, most of the examples

given by these interviewees in this theme – sitting in class with others, hearing languages being spoken, walking or

living alongside culturally different peers – stand as passive, indirect forms that do not involve actual interaction or

communication between students.

While interviewees do not narrate specific on-campus intercultural interactions with their peers, these respondents

still declare that they have ongoing intercultural interaction but in a generalized way. ‘‘Henry,’’ a first generation

Mexican American junior, ‘‘My major, the department I’m in, it is, I think, one of the biggest ones at school and has

tons of different people. Mexicanos, Asians, Blacks, Whites, Filipinos and Tongans, gay people, you name it, they’re

in my classes, it’s like a rainbow. It’s just the way it is in Soc.’’ As another example, ‘‘Liz,’’ a junior of Iranian

R.T. Halualani / International Journal of Intercultural Relations 32 (2008) 1–16 7

background, highlights how involved she is in campus student life. ‘‘You are part of this big mix, with each of us,

student leaders, presidents, officers, the ones who are . . . you know . . . active in clubs and all, there’s so much diversity

with it, you can’t help but do it.’’ These interviewees, along with others, underscore and refer to intercultural

interaction in a general sense with regard to a departmental program or involvement in student life on campus. By

‘‘general sense,’’ I mean that students frame their membership in campus life as inherently and naturally intertwined

with intercultural interaction. As reflected in the statements ‘‘I see different kind of people, students, in the hallways;

it’s like a rainbow. It’s just the way it is in Soc,’’ and ‘‘You are part of this big mix, with each of us, student leaders,

presidents, officers, the ones who are, active in clubs and all, there’s so much diversity with it, you can’t help but do it,’’

participants interpret intercultural interaction as constituting the very nature of these contexts and thus by being

immersed in these contexts, they too are immersed in intercultural interactions.

3.2. Theme #2: Intercultural interaction as ‘‘extra’’ or ‘‘outside’’ of students’ personal friendship and social

networks

For the second theme, 39% (31) of student interviewees (not included in the first theme) did specify intercultural

interactions they have had on campus. However, they defined and discussed intercultural interaction in a particular

way: as exchanges between culturally different persons who are completely outside of and extra to their own

friendship and social networks. In other words, participants did not refer to their own private, everyday interactions

with culturally different friends as being ‘‘intercultural.’’ Instead, they cited and narrated examples of intercultural

contact as those encounters they have with nationally/racially/ethnically different strangers they happen to meet in the

university context (Simmel, 1950). For instance, ‘‘Josh,’’ a Puerto Rican sophomore in Science, characterizes

intercultural interaction in the following way:

‘‘I think of this one girl from the Philippines. ‘Elizabeth,’ she was in the [professional student organization/club]

in my major. She’s from Manila, I’m from Saratoga. We hang out in two different groups. We’d always get to our

meetings early and just started talking . . . it was real cool, I could meet someone, someone from a totally

different place. I don’t think we’d met like normal. But, look, where we were, at that time every week, made 2

total strangers meet.’’

Here ‘‘Josh’’ refers to his meeting ‘‘Elizabeth’’ from the Philippines as constituting an intercultural interaction. He

immediately notes her different nationality and national language and explains how he and ‘‘Elizabeth’’ both come

from different places. ‘‘Josh’’ also alludes to how their paths normally do not cross given their class schedules and

friendship groups. Most telling is that ‘‘Josh’’ identifies ‘‘Elizabeth,’’ his intercultural interactant as a ‘‘stranger’’ in his

statement: ‘‘I don’t think we’d even met whatsoever. But, look, where we were, at that time every week, made 2 total

strangers meet.’’ ‘‘Josh’’ emphasizes the differences between ‘‘Elizabeth’’ and himself and suggests how these

differences separate them so much that it would be otherwise difficult to connect and interact. Thus, ‘‘Josh’’ interprets

intercultural interaction to be an exchange with a culturally different stranger who is completely removed from and

outside of his everyday contact networks.

Several other student participants define intercultural interaction similar to ‘‘Josh.’’ ‘‘Nina,’’ a Vietnamese

American sophomore who lives on campus, highlighted examples of intercultural interaction in terms of her

encounters with a student from Africa in her General Education class and a Japanese exchange student in a service-

learning project. She described these interactions as ‘‘important’’ because ‘‘they’re with people from places around the

globe, the whole cultures out there and getting to see that, when you know someone from a place you wouldn’t even go

to or even think about.’’ As another example, ‘‘Lori,’’ a Samoan sophomore who lives in the residence halls, names

intercultural interactions as ‘‘those bonuses you get in college that you don’t really expect.’’ This student views the

intercultural interactions that she has had as ‘‘extras,’’ or ‘‘perks’’ that are possible on a diverse campus. ‘‘Lori’’

explains, ‘‘Not like I’m surprised right? It makes sense that you’re going to meet different cultures in college, right? No

doubt. It’s just that you don’t get how big of a perk it is really is. For you to meet so many students of other cultures in

class like that, I talk to people in the hallway, in the groups or like if you are work-study, it’s absolutely gonna happen.

And with the countries that are here – India, China, Russia, Africa – it’s mind-blowing.’’ ‘‘Mark,’’ a self-described

‘‘queer Latino’’ sophomore, identified intercultural interactions as ‘‘meeting or talking with all these people who aren’t

in your group, ones you have never been . . . exposed to you know.’’ He goes further to distinguish two groups: ‘‘his

friends or hangouts’’ and ‘‘the cultural people you meet when you’re here at school.’’ ‘‘Frank,’’ a non-traditional 40-

R.T. Halualani / International Journal of Intercultural Relations 32 (2008) 1–168

year-old White/European American divorced father, explains that an intercultural interaction happens ‘‘when two

worlds come into contact with each other and interface.’’ He details his definition:

My own intercultural interactions, they have always been with folks who just I don’t know well or anything

about their worlds. Why they think what they do, how they approach life in their way. . . I can’t really say that

I’ve gotten any exposure even the tiniest bit with people from other worlds. . . Not with my friends. . .I’m ready to

have those kind of meaningful intercultural conversations with cultures I know nothing about.

‘‘Frank’’ expresses his interest (and lack of experience) in relating to or connecting with individuals and peers from

other cultures; these intercultural contacts have not become close, well-developed, or ‘‘meaningful’’ to him. He also

draws a line between two groups: his friends and the potential group of interactants from different cultural

backgrounds that he hopes to meet during his time at the multicultural university. These examples from ‘‘Frank,’’

‘‘Lori,’’ ‘‘Nina,’’ and ‘‘Mark’’ underscore how intercultural interactions stand out because they are deemed as ‘‘out of

the ordinary’’ or meeting with individuals from different cultures that one would not normally encounter in one’s life.

‘‘Lori’’ refers to such intercultural interactions as ‘‘extras’’ or ‘‘perks’’ that accompany the college experience. This

interpretation sheds light on the fact that students do not consider it a regular part of their everyday routine to meet with

culturally different persons; rather, unlike the first theme, intercultural interaction here is special and extraordinary to

these interviewees. Indeed, as ‘‘Nina’’ states, ‘‘You get to know someone from a place you wouldn’t go to or even think

about.’’ Note in particular that interviewees actually separate out intercultural interactants from their inner circle of

friends.

Interviewees therefore locate their intercultural interactions to be with culturally different strangers they meet on

campus (i.e., in class, departmental majors, co-curricular programs, student organizations, and on-campus

workplaces) and not with their friends (on or off campus). In fact, they never refer to these intercultural interactants in

their interview accounts as ‘‘friends’’ or ‘‘acquaintances’’; rather, they highlight these interactants as distant

‘‘strangers’’ they may not see again. According to participants, such intercultural contact is completely separate from

their everyday routines and ongoing/regular friendship networks.

One could argue that this finding is due to the fact that university students may conceptualize ‘‘culture’’ as national

culture and thus, their interactions with international students in particular would naturally be deemed separate from

their social in-group. I, however, contend that something much more significant is at work here. Interviewees

compartmentalize their intercultural contact as exchanges with strangers not because they have no intercultural

interaction with friends or acquaintances or their friends are not culturally different. No, students define and view their

intercultural interaction as occurring outside of their friendship networks because they simply do not see their friends

as ‘‘cultural’’ in the first place. These interviewees are reluctant to admit or claim that they develop friendships with

others on the sole basis of ‘‘culture.’’ For instance, in response to the question, ‘‘What is NOT intercultural interaction

to you?,’’ participants immediately pointed to the interactions they have with their friends and claimed that these were

not intercultural; instead, these relations with friends were about ‘‘people talking to people.’’ ‘‘Lisa,’’ a Mexican

American senior, explains: ‘‘With my best friend, Jen, she goes here, it’s not about culture or the intercultural thing,

we’ve known each other forever since like the eighth grade. We tell each other everything, our families know each

other.’’ Later in the interview, ‘‘Lisa’’ reveals that her friend ‘‘happens to be Filipino’’ (born in Manila and raised in the

U.S. since she was five). She states, ‘‘Yeah, I guess you could say she’s from a different culture but I don’t think it’s a

cultural thing at all; she’s not just cultural. It’s not about that. Culture never comes up. She doesn’t see me that way and

I don’t for her. . .We’re just friends. . .’’ ‘‘Lisa’’ highlights her friendship with ‘‘Jen’’ and establishes how close they are

as well as how long they have been friends. Although she inadvertently reveals that ‘‘Jen’’ is ethnically different,

‘‘Lisa’’ makes it clear that this information does not make her friendship an intercultural one. ‘‘Lisa’’ rejects the notion

that her exchanges with Jen represent intercultural interactions or makes their relation an intercultural friendship

because they do not discuss their cultures or limit themselves to sharing only things about their cultures. Other

interview sessions reiterate this same theme. For example, ‘‘Elizabeth’’ explains that she does not see her African

American friend as culturally different: ‘‘She’s ‘Marty,’ a whole person, with many sides, and not just race.’’ ‘‘J.R.,’’ a

Korean American pre-med student, echoes this idea; he talked about two of his friends and their hanging out as not

‘‘intercultural.’’ He discusses the following:

‘‘We all live in the same complex, one of us is buddies with the other’s brother, they’re chill, you go out, do your

thing, You’re not all in each other’s business about culture. I’m Korean, the other one is Black and the our other

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buddy is this guy, he’s Indian but it don’t really matter, when it comes right down to it. You’re just friends,

period.’’

Again, this participant acknowledges that his friends have different cultural backgrounds but denies that their

interactions are intercultural in light of such information. He makes such a claim by noting that they do not engage

each other on a cultural level (one he implies is privately held) because friendship is considered completely separate

from and independent of the terrain of culture and intercultural interaction.

There were many interview accounts like those of ‘‘Lisa’’ and ‘‘J.R.’’ 77% (24) of those interviewees correlated

with this theme, differentiated intercultural interaction from interaction with their friends who they refused to see as

‘‘culturally different’’ although they were of different racial and ethnic backgrounds from them. In several of these

interviews, students even referred to their Black, Asian, and Mexican friends as not really ‘‘Black,’’ ‘‘Asian,’’ or

‘‘Mexican’’, respectively. Interviewees continually employed the following statement: ‘‘He/she is just like me; he/

she’s not like how (Blacks, Asians, Mexicans, or Latinos) are.’’ This display of refunding as exceptions to the rule or

against closely held stereotypes of a cultural group, again highlights the separation of intercultural interaction from

friendship.

4. Discussion

4.1. Theme #1: Intercultural interaction as ‘‘presence’’: intercultural interaction as equivalent to being on a

demographically diverse campus

In these interview sessions, students’ constructions of intercultural interaction depart from the notion of

intercultural interaction as face-to-face exchanges between members of culturally different groups that is embedded in

intercultural contact research. Instead, the interviewees in this theme reveal that a generalized demographic context –

in terms of the overwhelming ethnic/racial/linguistic diversity of the multicultural university and its surrounding

region – becomes a substitute and stand-in for actual intercultural interaction on a personal and individualized level.

Respondents therefore define, perceive, and experience intercultural interaction without intercultural interaction

actually taking place between/among individuals.

Such a finding underscores the powerful association made by multicultural university students between one’s

presence or existence on a demographically diverse campus and real/concrete intercultural interaction/contact. This

association does not appear out of thin air; I argue that it results from a prevailing societal view of diversity that

circulates in culturally heterogeneous areas and stipulates that living amid cultural heterogeneity naturally and

seamlessly makes for a culturally openminded and tolerant community (Gordon & Newfield, 1996; Lowe, 1996; Omi

& Winant, 1994). In this case, multicultural university students invoke and reproduce such a societal view of diversity

in which their membership to a diverse campus (in a diverse region) automatically makes them interculturally

engaged, and by extension, culturally aware, openminded, and non-prejudiced.

For example, ‘‘Jen,’’ a Latina senior who lives off-campus, frames herself and her peers as ‘‘open to culture.’’ She

notes, ‘‘You can’t afford to be racist at a place like here. You have to be here with Blacks, Whites, all the Brown people,

people who speak differently than you. You become totally open and culturally . . . aware of other cultures. You respect

everybody.’’ ‘‘Steve,’’ a gay and Jewish student, explains, ‘‘When I’m around other students not from where I come

from, or have similar experiences or my identity, you do become the better for it. We let go of our predispositions to be

on a diverse campus, there’s no room for prejudice, if it was there, it goes ‘poof,’ that’s what this place does.’’ What is

interesting is that students claim that their openmindedness, awareness, and appreciation of cultural difference comes

about directly as a result of merely belonging to a diverse campus. Thus, interviewees make the interpretation that a

multicultural university’s demographic diversity automatically brings about a sense of cultural tolerance and

acceptance of others. Again, the majority of interviewees in this theme do not refer to having gained such cultural

openness and attitude change through specific interactional experiences.

By understanding intercultural interaction in this way, students reproduce a necessary link between being in the

presence of diversity to engaging in intercultural interaction and then to realizing cultural openmindedness, awareness,

and non-racist living. To be at a multicultural university is to also be interculturally involved and competent. This

linkage therefore demonstrates the powerful role societal views of diversity play in shaping how students define, view,

and experience intercultural interaction and doing so in a way that reconstitutes intercultural interaction to be solely

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about one’s proximity to different cultural/racial/ethnic groups and to a region with a pronounced focus on cultural

diversity and multiculturalism. The challenge at a multicultural university may be that diversity is so overemphasized

as a regional feature, campus priority, or marketing/recruitment slogan that it becomes framed as a hyperreality in

which it is deemed present, ubiquitous, and in excess (Lowe, 1996). In a context saturated with culturally different

persons, individuals cannot help but to presume that they themselves are having intercultural interactions now and all

the time, everywhere, and with many people. There are also other benefits and positive effects to taking up such a

societal view; interviewees expressed great confidence, satisfaction, and achievement in being at a multicultural

university and by ‘‘natural’’ extension, interacting with their diverse peers. They were also anxious to communicate

their non-racist, unprejudiced outlooks on their peers which appeared as the opening statements in several of the

interview sessions (‘‘I have no prejudices or biases at all. I go to this school and talk to everybody, I’m around at least

20 different cultures everyday’’ and ‘‘__U (initials of university), we’re progressive and experienced with races,

individuals of all persuasions, GLBT, women, immigrants. People who know me know that I try to treat everybody

wherever they’re from with the utmost respect and appreciation’’). Hence, the societal view of diversity enables

students to appear in the most positive and socially approvable light while also confounding their actual experiences of

intercultural interaction. This raises the point made by intercultural contact and prejudice researchers (Bramel, 2004;

Pettigrew & Troop, 2000) that examining intercultural contact through any method may be subject to individuals

responding in the most socially approvable and favorable way.

A negative consequence of this association between demographic diversity and intercultural interaction experiences is

that it actually may prevent individuals from seeking out and experiencing actual intercultural interaction because they

think they are already doing so. Likewise, students may reason that the heterogeneity of the area automatically leads to a

constant flow of intercultural interactions and thus, any extra motivation or effort to proactively engage culturally

different persons may fall to the wayside. Instead, students may rest ‘‘on the laurels’’ that the wheels of diversity and

intercultural interaction are already set in motion and will naturally commence. Future contact researchers may gain from

considering the societal view of diversity in particular regions as well as the number (and detailed nature) of actual, direct

intercultural interactions reported by individuals, when examining contact conditions and variables at play.

Another important aspect of this theme is that participants highlight that at some point they are amid so much

diversity and thus, having so much intercultural interaction that they ultimately forget about and no longer notice the

cultural differences of those around them. Statements such as ‘‘Oh, there’s so much diversity, I don’t notice it

anymore,’’ ‘‘I go, oh yeah, my friends in Oregon, visit me, they look around, they think it’s a trip what we have, like so

many races and cultures, I’m so used to it, it doesn’t phase me anymore’’ reflect interviewees’ forgetting and

abstraction of the cultural diversity that surrounds them. Cultural diversity no longer stands out as extraordinary or

unique to student interviewees; in fact, there is so much diversity around that participants take it for granted. But what

happens when students do not view their peers (or the larger university setting) as intercultural or cultural at all? How

does this reading of culture as forgotten or unnoticed play into how students interpret and make sense of their

interactions with culturally different peers? The impact such an abstraction of culture has on how students view and

understand intercultural interactions is unclear. According to Hewstone (1994) and Hewstone and Brown (1986), past

intercultural contact scholars argue that individuals need to recognize their interactants as culturally different and

‘‘typical’’ or ‘‘representative’’ members of a specific ethnic/racial/cultural group in order for there to be an opportunity

to rethink their attitudes that cultural group and potentially reduce their prejudices or biases. Thus, according to past

intercultural contact research, without any acknowledgement that their peers are culturally different, students may not

take the full advantage and promise of intercultural interactions’ potential to transform how they think, view, and act

towards other cultures on a daily basis. Instead, as student interviewees reveal, the multicultural university is

understood as an arena where intercultural interaction is presumed to exist (but in a general way) and then, on another

level, where intercultural interaction eventually transcends culture and difference. This finding highlights the need for

contact researchers to examine how this abstraction of culture motivates or hinders individuals from engaging in

intercultural interaction and the resulting attitudinal effects.

4.2. Theme #2: Intercultural interaction as ‘‘extra’’ or ‘‘outside’’ of students’ personal friendship and social

networks

The second theme highlighted how interviewees framed intercultural interaction as extra to and outside of their

regular social networks. They frame intercultural interaction as occurring largely with nationally different strangers.

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Respondents in this theme immediately recalled interactions they had with international students residing in the U.S.

for a short period or classmates born and raised in other countries who now live in the region. All of these interactants

were deemed ‘‘strangers’’ or individuals they do not see on an ongoing basis and across a variety of contexts. Because

the contact hypothesis delineates the importance of intercultural contact occurring regularly over a period of time and

across a variety of contexts, one wonders whether the kind of intercultural interaction students are having on campus

will lead to attitude change and the breakdown of deeply held stereotypes of other cultures. The concern becomes how

much impact can one-shot or temporary exchanges with culturally different strangers have on individuals. Or perhaps,

these type of fleeting interactions may carry more influence than contact researchers think; the uniqueness and

noteworthy distinction of these ‘‘connections’’ students make with individuals of other nations, may interest and

motivate students to engage nationally different persons in other classes and venues. (Likewise, the questions posed to

students highlight ‘‘intercultural interactions’’ may have inadvertently superimposed the notion of one-shot, finite

exchanges between persons as opposed to relationships, onto participants.)

It is also important for contact researchers to examine how intercultural interaction is framed by universities and

intercultural fields of study for our students. To what extent are institutions and academic fields of study constructing

intercultural interaction to be exoticized exchanges across national boundaries? Twelve students in this theme

highlighted the global focus of their departmental majors (in Science, Engineering, Business, Social Science) in their

descriptions of exchanges with international students as constituting intercultural interactions. With the recent focus

on global citizenship and competencies in university curricula, students may therefore be taking the lead of academic

institutions in conceptualizing ‘‘intercultural’’ in primarily ‘‘international’’ terms, at the expense of more localized,

domestic attributes such as race, ethnicity, gender, regional origin, and sexual orientation, among others. This link may

be useful to analyze how intercultural interaction may more likely in the future to be understood exchanges one has

with nationally different students.

Moreover, in this theme, interviewees make it clear that they do not consider their exchanges with their culturally

different friends to be intercultural interactions. This finding in which students perceive intercultural interaction with

strangers as opposed to friends goes beyond whether or not the topic of culture is discussed or there is engagement at

the cultural level. It has to do with a more fundamental issue; how interviewees view (and choose to view) their friends

as removed from culture. I call this practice the abstraction or universalization of culture or difference. Most of my

interviewees refuse to see their friends, many of whom are indeed racially/ethnically different, as culturally different

and as intercultural interactants in their lives. I ask: Why is this the case? This could be due to the pervasive ideology of

colorblindness in the U.S. which erases and shuns any mark of ‘‘difference’’ or ‘‘race’’ as an attempt (albeit misguided)

to equalize and neutralize intercultural relations. Student interviewees readily accept, invoke, and apply this ideology

to their own social networks in order to positively frame and approach their friends without the heightened ‘‘political

correctness’’ and race/diversity-based sentiments of the region. Such an ideology makes students feel more

comfortable (‘‘When you’re with your friends, you together want to feel good about each other, not like you have to be

someone from this group, representing or anything’’) and just (‘‘The whole – you are this, you are that – it’s unfair, it’s

racist, I don’t want any part of it’’). Taking up this ideology of colorblindness also represents a counter-response on the

part of students to the university’s (and region’s) focus on diversity.

In addition, I argue that students outright reject the conceptualization of their friends as intercultural interactants

because of the image such an act would proffer onto them. If they were to frame their friends as culturally different

examples of intercultural contact, it would suggest that they were overly conscious of culture and thus select and seek

out individuals to befriend (and not) based on those individuals’ culture, ethnicity, or race. Hence, student interviewees

may resist being perceived as culturally conscious and culturally selective for fear that they will be viewed in an

extreme way: as prejudiced and racist. Ten interviewees specifically raised this very issue. These participants became

adamant that they were not racist and objected that they would never bring up culture or think about it in context of

their friends. I also had one interviewee who became upset and abruptly ended the interview after I asked a follow-up

question about why he did not see his Asian friend as an intercultural friend or interactant. Indeed, interviewees’ public

self-image and the conceptualization of friends as intercultural interactants may certainly play a role in their face

image as well as in how they define, make sense of, and articulate their constructions of intercultural interaction.

Though Antonio (2001, 2004) and Wright et al. (1997) find that university students have culturally different friends,

my interviews illustrate that many multicultural university students do not perceive their extant friendships to be

cultural or intercultural in any way. This finding may have more to do with students’ desire to appear as if they are

culturally neutral, fair, egalitarian, and unbiased, which according to interviewees, meant they were unprejudiced and

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unbiased. Instead, as ‘‘Jamal’’ puts it, ‘‘it’s just about people naturally coming together and hitting it off.’’ Students’

adamant refusal to think about and approach their own social networks as intercultural, certainly reflects a desire to be

seen in a particular way but it also reflects an attitude of fear in engaging friends and loved ones on a cultural level.

Somehow interviewees equate the ‘‘culturalization’’ of their friendship networks as a form of discriminatory and

tokenizing treatment that robs any goodwill, sincerity, or equality from the close bond of friendship. In response, they

equalize and universalize their close contacts, thereby stripping them (and the relational bonds) of any vestige or mark

of culture. (The statements ‘‘He/she’s just a person/human; they’re who they are and not about a group’’ reflect the

ways in which interviewees want to emphasize a universal sameness among their friends and not mark them as

cultural/intercultural.) With this theme, then, it is no wonder that multicultural university students define and discuss

intercultural contact in context of encounters with culturally different strangers completely outside of their personal

social circles. Such a move is safer, socially approvable, nonjudgmental, pleasant, face-affirming, and positive

especially in context of the multicultural university. Contact researchers should examine further this refusal for

individuals to see their friends as ‘‘culturally different.’’ It is important here to examine how an individual defines the

kind of relationship she/he has with intercultural interactants and what ‘‘intercultural’’ means to her/him.

5. Conclusions and implications

Indeed, this study reveals how multicultural university students define and make sense of their on-campus

intercultural interactions in complex and unpredictable ways; a finding that departs from the contact hypothesis and

past intercultural contact research. Interviews with students do not confirm the salience of ideal or optimal conditions

of intercultural contact as theorized in the contact hypothesis and past research. Students’ constructions of contact

instead involve other unexamined factors such as: the amount of demographic diversity in the region, societal views of

diversity, the societal construction of what counts as ‘‘intercultural,’’ and the ‘‘face’’ of the respondent in terms of

appearing interculturally active and openminded. Thus, while past contact research operates through predetermined

and the most optimal contact conditions, this study illustrates that there are other unseen factors that impact

intercultural contact perceptions and experiences.

One major limitation in this work is that I only conducted 80 interviews which are specific to a culturally

heterogeneous university campus and regional area, making generalizability difficult at best. Despite this, though,

there are several important insights into and considerations about intercultural contact that can be gleaned from my

interview data.

First, the finding that students equated being on a demographically diverse campus to having actual intercultural

interaction, raises a larger question. What happens when intercultural interaction becomes a generalized notion that

stems from being a part of a diverse campus, institution, or region? Interviewees (overly) claim their participation in

intercultural interaction but without direct, personal experience or specific recalled accounts. In many cases,

participants estimated or had a strong ‘‘hunch’’ that they were engaging in intercultural interaction all the time—

similar to being on intercultural interaction auto-pilot. These perceptions derive from living in an area and attending a

campus that ranks high in demographic diversity as compared to other areas and institutions. Individuals assume that

being near or within such diversity presupposes that they interact with different cultures all the time and that they are

not racist or prejudiced. Such assumptive leaps are shaped in part by the surrounding sociopolitical ideologies that

circulate in that region or across the country. Thus, this finding underscores the key role that societal views may play in

shaping and framing intercultural contact in terms of individuals’ constructions, frameworks of interpretation,

motivations, and behaviors. The challenge, then, is for us to examine and interrogate the ways in which societal views

enter in and congeal to individuals’ definitions and sensemakings of intercultural contact. As in the case of this specific

theme, it is vital to further investigate examples of how and why an ideology becomes a substitute for actual

intercultural interaction and may even work to exempt individuals from pursuing such contact. Consequently, we may

need to change the nature of how we study intercultural contact from large-scale survey studies to focused, in-depth

qualitative explorations of individuals’ sensemakings of intercultural interaction along with context/textual analyses of

newspaper, media, and public discourses that articulate regional and national constructions of diversity and culture.

Intercultural contact may encompass more factors and considerations (which may change over time) than originally

thought.

Second, students in the first theme explain that they forget their interactions are intercultural or with culturally

different persons because ‘‘there is so much diversity’’ that they forget it exists. This finding may be specific to the

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campus-of-study and its surrounding region in that demographic diversity is so pronounced and emphasized that it

becomes ordinary, mundane, naturalized, and indistinguishable. Such a naturalization of cultural difference may

greatly impact how individuals perceive, interpret, and experience intercultural interaction. As one interpretive

possibility, an individual may no longer see her or his interactions as uniquely intercultural and thus, these interactions,

now neutralized and generalized, no longer carry the potential to change one’s mind or preconceived notion about her

or his culturally different interactants. Or as another possibility, an individual could work under the assumption that all

interactions require the same attitude of openmindedness, care, and effort once reserved especially for intercultural

interactions. It remains to be seen how pervasive this forgetting of or bracketing off of cultural difference is among

individuals in various contexts and regions and the impact this perception has on the subjective constructions of

intercultural interaction. Perhaps, such an approach to intercultural interactions, though seemingly simplistic, may

actually help to create a more openminded attitude among individuals towards other cultures given that culturally

different persons are presumed to already be present and a part of their everyday lives. But there is a potential downside

as well. This bracketing off of culture may promote a type of non-engagement or non-reflexive stance towards cultural

difference in which one’s predispositions, judgments, and stereotypes of specific cultural groups are not processed,

challenged, or re-thought. Here I ask: Is it better to have individuals notice and highlight the ‘‘intercultural’’-ness or

cultural difference of their interactions or not? What are the sensemakings and consequences that correspond with

each approach? Past contact research highlights the importance of individuals changing their views of culturally

different interactants in their lives and then generalizing their views to all members of that specific cultural group.

What if the generalizing approach precedes and frames the entire interaction to the point where it elides any mark of

cultural difference? I argue that more research needs to be done on the extent to which intercultural interaction needs to

be recognized by individuals as ‘‘intercultural’’ in the first place and what we lose or gain by conceptualizing

intercultural interaction in this way. (Why couldn’t we, for example, presume that all interactants are different, diverse,

and unique from the start? Wouldn’t that enable us to work harder or in a specific way towards all interactants? An

interculturally sensitive universalist approach?)

Next, the interview data illustrate that students define and interpret intercultural interaction as occurring largely

outside of their personal friendship networks and in one-shot or short-term exchanges with nationally different

students. What stands out here is the fact that many interviewees frame intercultural interaction as extraordinary, so

extraordinary that it is located outside of their everyday social network and routine. They report that they had

intercultural interactions mostly with international students as opposed to their own national counterparts. The notion

that students separate out intercultural interactions from their friendship networks is unique especially given past

research studies’ presumption that they see intercultural interaction as an integral part of their lives. This very

separation may be due to participants’ conceptualization of ‘‘culture’’ as nation, one that is socially acceptable and less

controversial. It may be just as important to find out why some constructions of culture and intercultural interaction are

invoked over others and from where these constructions derive (from the media, campus focus, university curricula).

Even more interesting is the fact that interviewees adamantly refuse to identify their friends as culturally different

even though these individuals are from different racial and ethnic backgrounds and national origins. This finding may,

again, be the result of the ideological influence of colorblindness that has swept across the U.S.; a widely accepted

view that if one denies any cultural difference or race among people, all individuals can be treated equally without any

preferential treatment based on race and prejudice and racism will be in effect eradicated (Goldberg, 1993). Therefore,

such an ideology may play a role in shaping how students define, approach, and make sense of intercultural interaction

as well as their own personal friendships. Studying ‘‘intercultural friendships’’ may not yield as much in that in some

regional areas, individuals influenced by the pervasive influence of colorblindness and the conservative-initiated

political correctness movement, may today resist the fusing together of ‘‘culture’’ with ‘‘friendship.’’ In addition, it is

curious that intercultural interactions seem situated in one-shot or time-limited moments, classes, and contexts, and

not ongoing friendships or continuous relationships, as stipulated by theorized contact conditions. Again, more

research needs to be conducted on how individuals compartmentalize intercultural interaction away from their

everyday routines and social networks and the extent to which these interactions are relegated to something ‘‘extra’’ as

opposed to something frequent and regular in their lives (akin to one of the studied conditions of the contact

hypothesis). This not only changes how individuals view intercultural contact; it transforms how we as researchers

approach the study of intercultural contact.

It is important to note overall that more qualitative studies should be done on how individuals define, construct, and

make sense of intercultural contact across a variety of settings (schools, workplaces, health care facilities,

R.T. Halualani / International Journal of Intercultural Relations 32 (2008) 1–1614

neighborhoods and communities) and in areas with different degrees of demographic diversity. My study may look

entirely different if conducted on a largely culturally homogenous university campus in a region with one predominant

cultural group majority. Examining individuals who reside in areas of different demographic composition is important

to pinpoint how the regional makeup may influence how individuals define, understand, and experience intercultural

interaction in their lives.

Lastly, qualitative methods serve as essential tools to uncover how culturally different persons define, experience,

and interpret intercultural contact in context of their lives. In-depth interviews, focus groups, and diary case studies

may help provide crucial information about how and why individuals engage (or do not) in intercultural contact and

the kind of perceptions and evaluations they take from these moments. However, we, intercultural contact researchers,

may need to expand the ways in which we employ these qualitative methods to draw out all of the critical information

about the nature and experience of intercultural contact from these data forms. My focus on the recurring themes that

were salient in the interview sessions, for example, may not have fully tapped into all of the individually specific and

distinct ways in which students constructed and made sense of their intercultural interactions. As guided by the

method, I operated through a focus on ‘‘the commonalities or widely shared meanings’’ embedded in the interview

data so much so that I did not pay attention to the contradictions, oppositional readings, and individual surprises

revealed in the interviews. Likewise, qualitative methods, while useful in gleaning specific concrete details of issues,

operate through broader, open-ended question forms. This may result in corresponding broader, more generalized

responses. Noticing the wide range of definitions and readings created by individuals and the areas of agreement,

difference, and ambivalence in individuals’ accounts of intercultural interaction, is crucial for us to better understand

the shifting, contextual, and subjective nature of intercultural contact.

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