de Federico de la Rúa, A.

(2008) « How do erasmus students

make friends? » en Ehrenreich, Susanne; Woodman, Gill y Per-
refort, Marion (editoras) Auslandsaufenthalte in Schule und
Studium: Bestandsaufnahmen aus Forschung und Praxis. Mün-
ster: Waxmann. [Stays abroad in secondary and higher educa-
tion: Current research and practice.]

How do Erasmus students make friends?

Ainhoa de Federico, Lille (France)

1 Introduction
Since 1987 the Erasmus programme has enabled about 1.5 million European uni-
versity students to study in other European universities for a period of 3 to 12
months. This programme is the ‘star’ educational project of the EU; it is the oldest,
and it has received the most financial support. There seem to be two main reasons
underlying this investment: firstly, the desire to create European citizens and, sec-
ondly, the aim to create dynamic managers in a competitive Europe (Papatsiba
2003; Ruiz-Gelices & Favell 2000). With regard to the first reason, the Erasmus
programme states that student exchange should help "reinforce the spirit of Euro-
pean citizenship" and "reinforce the understanding between the peoples of Europe"
(European Commission 1995). This aim embodies the basic principle implicit in
the "contact hypothesis" developed in social psychology, which states that contact
and interaction between people of different social groups should foster solidarity
and understanding (Allport 1954). The principle is that students spending several
months in another country should make friends with students from that country,
and that this will help Erasmus students develop better knowledge and understand-
ing of the country and positive attitudes towards it.
Social psychology has specified the conditions needed so that contact between
people from different cultural backgrounds fosters mutual understanding, solidarity
and cooperation. It is necessary: 1) that the members of the different groups have
equal status, 2) that cooperation between them helps them reach their goals, 3) that
institutions support equality and cooperation, and 4) that members of the different
groups have the opportunity to develop personal relationships (Allport 1954;
Gaertner et al. 1996). In principle it would be expected that these criteria are met in
the context of the Erasmus programme: Erasmus students have a status equal to that

1
of local students,1 cooperation between Erasmus students and local students may
facilitate their success as students and2 the university institutions support the pres-
ence of Erasmus students. Finally, Erasmus students and locals, have the oppor-
tunity to become acquainted and develop friendships, or even to become partners.
Research on the effects of student mobility, however, often shows disappointing
results when measured against the very positive assumptions behind the "contact
hypothesis". In reality, the impact of a period abroad on students' attitudes towards
the host country can often be quite limited and not always positive (Schild 1962;
Selltiz and Cook 1962; Stroeber et al 1988; Opper et al. 1990 among others). This
is so much the case that social psychologists are asking themselves if student mo-
bility might not be the great exception to the contact hypothesis. So what is happen-
ing? When one looks closely, one can see that studies on student mobility often do
not examine systematically those with whom the exchange students socialise. In
other words, they underestimate the real contact part of the contact hypothesis. To
examine the contact hypothesis in student mobility it is necessary to look at two
sets of consecutive processes in their logical order. First, selection processes, that
is, how and with whom do Erasmus students cultivate relationships? Only when
these fundamental questions are clarified can the second group of processes that
build on the first ones be addressed. This second group consists of influence pro-
cesses: what are the effects of real relationships on attitudes, opinions etc? Given
that the first aspect is often neglected in studies on student mobility, this paper will
focus on how, and with whom, Erasmus students make friends. Friendship is cho-
sen as the key relationship because friendship is a voluntary personal relationship
(Allan 1979) that Erasmus students can create in their short time of stay, and also
because Erasmus students themselves, like other people of their age, give a lot of
importance to friends.
In this paper, after presenting the research material, I will examine, first of
all, whether Erasmus students make friends at all during their stay abroad. If they
have no friends, they have no social integration and not much can be expected in
terms of the contact hypothesis. Secondly, what kind of friends do they make?
Within the framework of the contact hypothesis, it makes a difference if they make
friends with local students, with fellow countrymen or with other international stu-

1 However, often they do not follow the same classes as local students do and they may not
have the same kind of examinations. This is frequently out of tolerance to their language
level, or more often because their evaluation is ultimately carried out by their home univer-
sity.
2 But the relationship is asymmetrical. While Erasmus students may perform better in their
examinations with the help of local students, the local students do not gain anything in par-
ticular from cooperation with Erasmus students, with the possible exception of language stu-
dents or would-be Erasmus students. Otherwise, for a local, cooperating with an Erasmus stu-
dent may imply more 'costs' (because the Erasmus students have less information about the
local context and they are slower in communication) than cooperating with another local stu-
dent.

2
dents. As we will see later, these different kinds of friendship ties imply different
links to "otherness" and thus different kinds of cognitive influences. When we look
at kinds of friends in general (i.e. friends who are locals, friends who are compatri-
ots and friends from the other international groups) we will focus on two interesting
phenomena: firstly, the extent of local integration of Erasmus students, which could
be expected to have a direct influence on the transformation of attitudes towards the
host country, and secondly, the multicultural group of international students. We
will then examine in more detail the development of friendship networks and the
emergence of a "community" of international students in which great intercultural
contact and learning can take place. Finally, we will look at what remains one year
after the mobility.

2 The data
The findings that will be presented come from two sets of data (de Federico 2003a).
The first concerns Erasmus students who arrived in the University of Lille 1
(France) during the first semester of 1995/96. At the time I was also an Erasmus
student in Lille, and could do participant observation. I also gathered information
on 80 (N=80) of the 103 hosted Erasmus students both upon their arrival and four
months later. I used a questionnaire in French which included a systematic descrip-
tion of friendship relations using tools from social network analysis (Wellman and
Berkowitz 1988). In that part of the questionnaire I asked an open question so that
Erasmus students could mention as many "friends and mates they met during
Erasmus" as they liked. Then I asked for details concerning each of the relation-
ships they mentioned. A year after they had returned home, in June 1997, I sent
questionnaires to all 103 students again; 30 of them replied. While this is a small
and non-representative sub-sample, it gives us some indication as to the survival
rate of relationships. This first study allows us to have a good idea about the pro-
cess of friendship formation as well as about the durability of friendship over time
for a group of students who all arrived together.
The second set of data was gathered in 1999/2000 from 217 students in three
different universities: again the University of Lille 1 in France (N=77), the Public
University of Navarre in Pamplona, Spain (N=90) and the University of Groningen
in The Netherlands (N=50). The 90 students from the Public University of Navarre
in Pamplona was comprised of 56 local third year students (N=56) who were not
participating in the Erasmus programme and 34 (N=34) Erasmus students. The
former (N=56) were interviewed for comparative purposes as a control group. In
this study, I also interviewed students using a questionnaire, which again included a
systematic investigation of the students’ friendship networks in the same way as in
the previous study. This data allows us to check if integration is the same or not
across different universities and for different year groups. In the following com-
parisons I will call data from the first study 'Lille 95' and data from the second

3
'Lille 99', 'Groningen 99', 'Pamplona 99' for Erasmus students in Pamplona and
'Control 99' for the non-Erasmus students in Pamplona.

3 Findings

3.1 Do Erasmus students make friends?

The first rough indication of the relational integration of Erasmus students is evi-
dent from the number of friends they make. Erasmus students make many friends
in a short time, 16 friends on average, although individual differences are import-
ant; friendship networks range from 3 to 30 friends. The Erasmus students who
made the most friends on average were those in Lille 95 (19) and those who made
least were those in Pamplona 99 (13). Students from Control 99 mention 14 friends,
so in Pamplona Erasmus students have almost the same number of friends as locals
who have been there for many years. Of course Erasmus friendships are in an early
stage of formation and should also be compared with those of other 'new students'.
According to Bunt's study (1999), first year students in the Netherlands mention 8
friends after 4 months of their first arrival to the university. So, compared to non-
mobile students, in general, Erasmus students actually make lots of friends very
fast.
The data provided in the questionnaires and from the observation indicates that
this is probably due to their being far away from their usual family and friends, to
having time, and to a need to find company and help in daily life. Family and
friends at home can play a role in giving advice, talking, offering financial help, or
in any activity that can take place from a distance using technological support
(phone, e-mail, letters). But for those activities where presence is needed, Erasmus
students look for new people with whom to enjoy themselves (having meals, going
out, organizing daily household tasks, playing sports and studying but also asking
for advice, exchanging information about the environment or talking about personal
matters). In fact, interaction with family and friends at home decreases a lot during
the stay abroad and Erasmus students contact only a small number of people regu-
larly during this period. It seems that, when possible, Erasmus students create a
new network to substitute for the usual home network in practical matters, and at
the same time they complement it with a small number of very important relations
at home.

3.2 Who are the friends?

So it has become clear that, during the Erasmus period, students make lots of new
friends and that they interact mostly with new people who they have met in the host
country, but what kind of people are they? We have distinguished three types of
friendship ties characterised largely by the nationality groupings of the friends:

4
local people, compatriots, and people from other countries. These three categories
will be considered separately below.
Firstly, Erasmus students can interact with people from the host country. This
first kind of contact is what would seem desirable and it is often automatically as-
sumed to be the result of exchange programmes. This kind of relationship links the
Erasmus student to the host society and provides an occasion for learning not only
language skills but also the norms and behaviour considered appropriate in the host
society.
The second kind of friends students can have, if these are present, are fellow
countrymen. It is understandable that Erasmus students want to keep up some con-
tact with people from their own country, to take a break from time to time with
people who can speak their language and share common codes. It is known in
friendship literature that people usually prefer to have friends who are similar to
them (Fischer 1982). However, if most friends come from the home country, the
exchange could be considered a failure in terms of intercultural contact.
A third kind of relationship they could establish is neither with locals, nor with
compatriots but with people from other countries who are also on an exchange.
This kind of relationship does not provide a link to the host society, but it does not
keep the student in the normative atmosphere of his own country either. It links the
student to a multicultural community where norms are in constant negotiation and
adjustment, and where multilateral learning is possible with fewer sanctions and
more solidarity than in the local society.
In the data from the two studies, no students were completely without friends,
so they could all be placed in combinations of having: either one, two or all three
types of friends. As a first indication of the type of integration, table 1 shows the
proportion of students who had each combination of friend types, regardless of the
number of friends in each category.
Table 1 shows that relational profiles with only one kind of friends are rela-
tively rare, representing 14% of all students. Just one student had only local friends;
in this case he had gone to France to follow his French girlfriend and he related ex-
clusively with her friends. This student represents a very interesting exception, but
an exception nevertheless. Otherwise, it is more common to have friends from one's
own country only (7%), or Erasmus friends from other countries (6%), which is
interesting from an intercultural point of view but limiting in terms of contact with
the host country.

Combinations of friends:
Nationals, Erasmus, Locals Nb. %
Only national friends 15 7%
Only Erasmus friends 14 6%
Only local friends 1 0,5%
National and Erasmus friends 28 13%
National and local friends 24 11%
Erasmus and local friends 15 7%

5
 National, Erasmus and local friends 120 55%
Total 217 100%

Table 1: Qualitative relational integration profiles3

It is much more common to have at least two kinds of friends, usually in combina-
tions which include same nationality friends combined with either other Erasmus
students or locals (13% and 11% respectively). Having a combination of Erasmus
students and local friends but excluding friends from one's own country is less fre-
quent (7%), and happens mostly when students have either no-one from their own
country or a very limited choice. Finally, slightly more than half the sample (55%)
has all three kinds of friends: locals, compatriots as well as Erasmus students and
could be considered qualitatively cosmopolitan. They are able to make connections
within all three worlds and they represent the largest group.
If we look at the overall picture, 93% of Erasmus students have at least one
friend from a different country, and 74% have at least one friend from the host
country. This looks like a reason to rejoice in terms of intercultural contact for the
Erasmus program. However, having only one friend is not the same as having two
or three, or having many of a particular kind. Therefore, it might be interesting to
ask how many friends of each kind Erasmus students have.

3.2.1 Local integration

As far as contact with local students is concerned (using data from both studies but
excluding the control group) the picture is less positive: only 17% of all friends are
from the host society. The remaining 83% are either from the same country or other
"Erasmus" friends. There are small differences between the different samples:
Erasmus students in Pamplona 99 (22%) and in Lille 95 (19%) have slightly more
local friends, and in Groningen 99 (16%) and in Lille 99 (14%) they have slightly
fewer. All contexts are relatively similar with regard to the difficulty Erasmus stu-
dents face in integrating locally. For example, in all contexts: 1) local students al-
ready have their friendship needs covered, while Erasmus students are in need of
contact fast, 2) Erasmus students share the experience of being "strangers" (cf.
Simmel 1908 and Schütz 1944, who define this sociological figure) in an unknown
context and have to learn new norms and codes of behaviour but may be slow and
awkward in the process of adapting, 3) the fact that Erasmus students only stay for
a short time probably makes it of little interest for locals to befriend them while it is
of great interest for Erasmus students to make friends with accessible and more tol-
erant Erasmus students.

3 This table displays data from Lille 95, Lille 99, Groningen 99 and Pamplona 99. Data from
Control 99 (N=56) are excluded in this table, as well as 24 cases from both samples for which
data were not clear and were considered missing values. For more details about distributions
in each sub-sample, see de Federico 2004.

6
 Curiously enough, the two cohorts of Erasmus students in Lille are among those
who make the most local friends (Lille 95) and the least local friends (Lille 99).
This suggests that difficulties in local integration has less to do with the character-
istics of the hosting university/nation (ie. it is not the result of locals in different
countries being more or less welcoming to Erasmus students) and more to do with
the specific strategies or skills of individuals within the cohorts of Erasmus stu-
dents. Indeed, as table 2 shows, individual differences in numbers of local friends
are very strong.

Number of local friends Number Percentage

0 56 26%
1 50 23%
2 28 13%
3 20 9%
4 17 8%
5-18 46 21%
Total 217 100%

Table 2: Number of local friends4

As we can see in the table, and bearing in mind that Erasmus students have 16
friends on average, many students have very few local friends. 26% of Erasmus
students do not have a single local friend; 36% only have one or two friends and
the remaining 38% have between 3 and 18 local friends. That is, almost two thirds
of Erasmus students have a very poor level of local integration. This means that, on
the whole, there is a gap between Erasmus students and locals, the former relating
mostly among themselves - with either people from their own country or other
Erasmus students - but with one third of Erasmus students acting as strong bridges
between the "Erasmus community" and the local social life.
The relative scarcity of local friends could partly explain the relatively small -
and not necessarily positive - impact that exchange programs have on attitudes to-
wards host countries (reported in studies as those by Opper et al 1990; Schild 1962;
Selltiz and Cook 1962; Stroeber et al. 1988; among others).

3.2.2 Multicultural cross-national friendships

However, while local friends are rare and therefore not particularly strong channels
of influence, the picture is very different if we look at cross-national friendships. In
fact, cross-national friendships are most frequent form of friendship tie: 60% of all
friendships occur with someone from a different country. So, although it could be
said that the Erasmus programme fails to provide an ideal context for creating fre-
quent strong relations with local students for the majority of participants, it could
be considered a great success in that it provides an opportunity for students to make

4 Data here was taken from both samples but excluding Control 99 as well as 24 cases from
both samples where data was not clear and/or incomplete .

7
many friends from different countries. If we bear in mind that contact takes place
mostly with people from other countries and adapt our research focus accordingly,
then quite possibly our results may start to look less disappointing with regard to
the contact hypothesis.
So we see that, in all three universities that we have studied, an "Erasmus com-
munity" appears, representing an embryo of a European society, which develops
normative and cultural hybridizations and a particular way of life within the univer-
sity. This community is re-created every year, renewing most of its members and
including some locals (often former or future Erasmus students themselves), but
becoming a permanent Erasmus sub-culture in universities. Obviously the impact
of such a "European community" within the university would not be the same if
Erasmus students were - instead of the current 1% to 3% of student population -
10% of all students, as was the initial objective of the program, or as could be seen
in the early twentieth century, 38% at French universities and as many as 56% in
Swiss faculties of medicine (Manitakis 2000). In this case, the "Erasmus com-
munity" would not only have an impact on its members, but perhaps even on the
student community as a whole.

3.3 The emergence of the 'Erasmus community' – Analysing the development of

friendship networks
Given that Erasmus students mostly relate with other Erasmus students, it makes
sense to investigate the friendship network of this "Erasmus community". The data
gathered in 1995/96 allows such an analysis and this is presented briefly here. First
of all, let us analyse the two figures representing friendship ties among Erasmus
students at two different moments. The initial situation upon arrival (cf. figure 1)
shows a very sparse network with almost no ties. A few people were already
friends or came as a couple, while some knew each other from their university, but
did not have a particular relationship. The exception is a group of friends studying
mathematics who came together from Great Britain (cf. Tracey, Victoria and oth-
ers).
[Figure 1 / acqur-b&w.jpg]

Figure 1: Erasmus acquaintances in October 1995 in Lille

Four months later (cf. figure 2) the situation is very different and many friendship
ties have emerged among the students in quite a dense network in which the visible
subgroups are multinational.

[Figure 2 / friendsr_t B&W.jpg]]

8
Figure 2. Erasmus friends in February 1996 in Lille

Now, how did the network of initial acquaintances develop into the friendship net-
work? Where and how did Erasmus students meet and develop their friendship? An
analysis of the evolution of social networks from acquaintances to friends using the
SIENA programme (Snijders 2001)5 based on the data from the questionnaires in
Lille 1995 yields the results outlined in the following section.6 A certain number of
factors influenced the choice of friends within the Erasmus circle; some of them are
common to friendship development in any setting, some are unique to the Erasmus
group, and some of the factors normally in evidence are actually absent.

3.3.1 Factors influencing Erasmus friendship networks

Among the usual factors influencing friendship choice we find phenomena such as
reciprocity (i.e. we choose people who also choose us as friends) and transitivity
(i.e. friends of friends become friends). Besides these, Erasmus students in the
sample tended to find their friends in the student residences where they lived, con-
stituting together informal "living units". They would agree to do certain things to-
gether: shopping, cooking, eating their meals, washing the dishes etc.. Weekend
breakfast in pyjamas was not uncommon among Erasmus students in the halls of
residence. These shared moments were often described as delicious and similar to
family life. Also, there were moments where students learnt many things about
other countries and cultures: different ways to celebrate festivities (e.g. Christmas
and birthday traditions), timetables, ways of cooking, table manners, rules of po-
liteness, different gender-roles etc..
On the other hand, and unlike the way home students make friends, it was not
common for Erasmus students to find their friends in a shared course of studies.
Study settings, or common interest in a given discipline, did not seem to play a role
in bringing Erasmus friends together. The same could be said about sports or other
leisure activities, which, surprisingly enough, did not seem to play a role in the
choice of friends. One of the Erasmus students from Lille 1995 explained this as
follows:

5 SIENA analysis allows the study of different processes at play in the evolution of a social
network. To describe the evolution of the network it is necessary to have descriptions of the
state of friendship ties in the network at two different points in time. SIENA analysis facili-
tates the study of network-related processes of groups such as reciprocity, transitivity or ten-
dency to become ‘closed’ entities, and also of individual characteristics of actors in the net-
work (gender, nationality) and of the characteristics of dyads (distance of dwelling, intimacy
etc.).
6 A detailed text with all methodological details can be found in de Federico 2003a or de Fede-
rico 2003b. Due to lack of space only the main ideas from the SIENA analysis are shown
here.

9
 When I am at home if someone likes going to the movies like me, it may be something
bringing us together. Here it doesn't matter because everyone is willing to do and try
everything: we go to the movies, but also to the opera, to rock concerts, to ride horses,
to travel, to museums, to play sports... and we also study. Many are taking the chance to
do things they would not usually do at home. And we do it non-stop. When at home we
would do one activity a week, here we do something almost every day. All kinds of
things. It looks like the week has many more hours but it is also because we always find
someone available who wants to go for it.

The preference for same-sex friends, a usual factor in friendship studies, was a sur-
prisingly absent phenomenon in this context. Studies on friendship consistently
show that both men and women have a preference for friends of the same sex
across age and cultures (e.g. Bunt 1999; Requena 1994). Erasmus students, whether
women or men, had friends of either sex without difference. This could be ex-
plained by the absence of the "usual" moral surveillance network composed of
family members (Ferrand 1993) and friends, including perhaps a girlfriend or boy-
friend who might not approve of cross-gender relations, however innocent these
may be. Indeed, it is enough for the student just to perceive the home network as
having some kind of monitoring function even if in reality it does not. But this mo-
ral watchdog is not present during the Erasmus stay. Rumours of "inappropriate"
behaviour, if it happens, do not reach home when the only possible channels are
other Erasmus students from the same city. Also the fact that they all have to face
and explore different codes of behaviour, due to their position as "strangers", prob-
ably allows for more normative acceptance and freedom in the Erasmus com-
munity. Curiously enough, it was those students who had a boyfriend or girlfriend
at home who tended to be the the most likely to have a boyfriend or girlfriend dur-
ing their stay in Lille 95 (either as a substitution or as a parallel relationship).

3.3.2 Interesting differences between nationalities

A certain number of differences between the nationalities could be observed with
the SIENA analysis of Lille 95. Southern European students (Spanish, Italian,
Portuguese and Greek) tended to be chosen as best friends more often. British stu-
dents seemed to be the least active in making new friends. Observation of socia-
bility on campus (Lille 1995, participant observation) showed different behaviour
among the three larger groups (British, Italians and Spanish). Whereas it was often
possible to see Italians and Spanish walking around in groups on campus and invit-
ing other Erasmus students to participate in a collective activity, British students
seemed invisible. The interview data showed that the British often stayed in their
rooms with a very reduced number of other students or they played sports. Besides
what could be seen as differences in cultural sociability, British students in this
sample may have been less active and more isolated due to two other factors. They
were the only students who had arrived in Lille in groups of friends. With their
friendship needs already satisfied, perhaps they did not feel the urge to establish

10
new relationships, while others did. What at first may have been an advantage,
could have become a disadvantage in terms of intercultural contact and integration
in the "Erasmus community". Another factor was that British students mostly lived
in houses and not on campus like most other Erasmus students, which limited the
opportunity for interaction with them. Belgian students (all of them Flemish) were
the ones with the more "European" pattern of relations; they would mix more often
with a wider variety of friends from different nationalities.
If we look at the sub-groups appearing within this "Erasmus community" (cf.
figure 2) we can find four cores. Going from top to bottom and left to right we first
see a very small group of Danish students (white with black spot), who are a rela-
tively isolated small group and linked to a larger group of Greeks (black with white
spot). Greeks, Germans (dark grey), Austrians (horizontal lines) and two Britons
(black) form a second, quite densely linked group. In this group Greeks are very
central. Moving to the top right, we find the third and largest group. It is composed
of Italians (white), who are central, together with Spanish students (light grey),
three Belgians (vertical lines), a German and a British student. Down to the left we
find the fourth group, which is less dense. Students in this group have fewer
friends. It is composed mainly of British students, three Belgians and a Greek. The
two Portuguese students (crosses) do not clearly belong to any group and are inter-
esting. One of them (Fausto) was almost isolated while the other (Susana) played
an important role as a bridge between the mainly Italian-Spanish group and the
mainly British group. We can see that, whether dominated by one or two nationali-
ties or not, all groups are multinational and not strictly split into linguistic families,
religious traditions or North/South divides as might be expected.7
Another interesting feature reinforces the multicultural character of this com-
munity: friendship relations among people with the same nationality are more fre-
quent but when cross-national friendships occur, they are more reciprocal, that is,
stronger than same-nationality friendships. Maybe it is easier to mingle with people
with the same background as no effort is needed to understand and interpret behav-
iour, but if friendship is established with someone who is different, it may be be-
cause the person him/herself is particularly interesting. It may also be that a more
unique friendship with someone from another country is more valued than friends
from one's own country, who can easily be found at home.
Thus, we can see that the Erasmus community allows for great intercultural
contact. This is different from contact with locals, but it may allow for very inter-
esting cognitive effects, intercultural influences and normative transformations.
These international student communities themselves deserve attention and study.

7 Analyses in de Federico 2003a and 2003b show that none of these cultural categories are stat-
istically significant for choosing friends.

11
3.4 What remains?
The responses to the questionnaires in June 1997 allow us to have an idea of what
happens a year later. In these we can simultaneously examine several things: on the
one hand what relationships survived the return home, but also how relationships
evolved within the remainder of the stay abroad, after the observation in February
1996. A year after their return, students were still keepng in touch with two thirds
of the friends they had mentioned in February 1996, either through visits, phone
calls or letters (e-mail was not very common at the time). So students are active in
keeping most ties alive during the year after the stay abroad.
According to the questionnaires in June 1997, the number of local friends in-
creased significantly during the rest of the academic year 1995/96, and the number
of friends from the same country decreased dramatically. Once the immediate
needs were satisfied with same nationality or Erasmus friends, students seem to
have been more and more able to access locals in a slower rhythm of friendship
renewal, and the security provided by sharing familiar norms and the same mother
tongue may have become less important.
Certain friendships from the Erasmus period are maintained, especially with
those who were considered best friends and those with stronger reciprocity. Friend-
ships with people from different countries, especially if these countries are far
away, are kept up more often. Apparently, the more unlikely the friendship tie is,
the more it is valued and kept up after the period abroad. And among these, friend-
ships with southern Europeans (Spanish, Italians, Greeks and Portuguese) are still
preferred. Here two compatible interpretations are possible: a) people like to stay
friends with people from countries which might be nice holiday destinations, B)
southern Europeans often created the opportunities for socialsing among Erasmus
students to take place (giving parties and inviting all others to join in) and may
therefore have been perceived as particularly friendly and were thus preferred as
long-term friends. The shared experience was also important; students whose stay
was the same length stayed in touch more often, but the sub-groups we observed
also left their mark: friendships within the 4 subgroups we saw above tended to
survive longer.

4. Conclusion
The findings we have presented here show that the Erasmus experience produces
great intercultural contact during the exchange and also one year after. Some of
these friendships last well beyond the return home. Although I do not have any sys-
tematic data, the conditions in which these friendships were created suggest that for
many students participating in Erasmus at least one or two of these friendships will
last over ten years and maybe even for life. It is shown in friendship literature that
few friendships survive over ten years, but these friendships are precisely those
created in times of great uncertainty –like becoming a stranger abroad- or important

12
changes in life (Ferrand 1993). And we have seen from the data that chances are
that these long-lasting friendships will be cross-national. When I talk about my re-
search, often people tell me about that "Greek friend they still have", or about that
friend who got married in Austria, or their son who meets up with former Erasmus
friends all over Europe every year, or those two who moved together to another
country. I, over ten years later, still regularly talk on the phone with my two Ger-
man friends.
Some say that the Erasmus program is the human face of the EU and that the
Erasmus program has done more for European integration than all other EU poli-
cies together. This may or may not be true but in any case while "people don't fall
in love with a market" as Jacques Delors used to say, they may well fall in love
with other people. Within the Erasmus program they have a chance to do so.

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