“When I am with my family, I am told I sound too foreign. At university, I am the international one. Somewhere between these two, I started to wonder who I really am.” Mak Darryl expressed his struggles.
Studying abroad should have been a great experience for him—widening his horizons and expanding his social network for future career opportunities. However, confusion about his own identity left him feeling trapped between cultures, showing that the experience of living abroad often leads to complex questions of belonging.
Every year, Kingston University welcomes around 1,500 students from more than 140 countries, some of them are quietly facing similar concerns as Mak, struggling with their identity and sense of belonging. This is an often-overlooked challenge of living between cultures—a central issue concerning international students. An article in The Guardian notes that lower proficiency in spoken English complicates integration. For instance, Chinese students mainly use WeChat and Little Red Book, while Instagram and WhatsApp are favoured in the UK, presenting an immediate social barrier to integration with local students.
The Higher Education Policy Institute suggested introducing a “buddy system”, pairing domestic students with international students to strengthen integration. This system can be beneficial to Kingston University, regarding that we do not have any specific support for bonding international students and domestic students, yet some obstacles cannot be overcome simply with the power of love and friendships.
“Sometimes I really wanted to join their discussion, but not growing up here separates us from the beginning. We have very different childhoods and experiences. I can listen to their topics, but I can’t relate,” said Mak.
To really understand why so many international students wrestle with identity, we must unpack what “culture” means in their lives. For those with multiple cultural backgrounds, there’s a first culture, the one their parents grew up in. Then comes the second culture, the country they now live and study in. Somewhere between the two, a third culture begins to form. It’s no wonder that navigating who you are can feel confusing when your identity is built from more than one place.
Thiery (Thiery 泰利) was a British Hong Kong YouTuber. He created his YouTube channel back when he was 13 years old and wanted to bring British humour into Hong Kong in 2014. Due to mental health concerns, he paused his updates for a period before he made his return in 2023.
Thiery has many identities. As well as being a postgraduate student and a part-time content creator, he is also a “third culture kid”, having studied in Birmingham since he was seven. Feeling caught in between cultures took him years to overcome and recognise himself as a hybrid, said Thiery in one of his YouTube blogs.
Thiery’s story shows how living between cultures can quietly wear you down. He tried to hold on to his Cantonese to keep a bond with family, but the language, as part of his identity, still began to fade. Meanwhile, he never felt he’d truly found his place in his adopted culture either. That tension, he said, built up over time, leading to mood swings, disconnection, and a period of poor mental health that forced him to step back from his career in 2018.
Around one in six undergraduates is now suffering from mental health issues, according to an article published by King’s College London. Across the database, those with a “mixed” ethnicity (12%) are as likely to have mental health difficulties compared to their white counterparts.
I have been down this road before. As a third-year international student, I still feel as if I lack a sense of belonging to a home. My birth country seems distant to me now, but I am still nowhere close to becoming a Kingston native. Speaking with other internationals made me know that I wasn’t alone in this. International students could really use more help from the university, for those who are exploring not just their identity, but also their sense of belonging.
Students navigating second or third cultures need understanding and spaces that recognise their full complexity. Universities must move beyond the surface-level diversity and offer mor support, allowing them to see cultural conflict as a strength, not a struggle. The first step can simply begin with listening, giving students the language and visibility to talk about their identity without the fear of being “too foreign” or “not enough”.