Familiarity as a family: Close friendships between malaysian students and their co-national friends in the UK

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to explore close friendships and intimacy practices of Malaysian students in the context of living abroad. Some of the new close friends, specifically co-national friends in the UK, are perceived as “family” although some of them have not yet acquired family-like qualities in their relationships. Due to the situation of living abroad, the students acquired the “familiarity as a family” relationship—a new concept introduced in this study to explain this complicated relationship, with co-national friends in the Malaysian community in the UK. A sense of belonging and homophily, and shared physical space and activities are two key factors that influenced these practices of intimacy, which will foreground the discussion in this paper.