Cultural Identity and Cross-Cultural Adaptation: A Qualitative Study of Social Integration among China's mainland Students in Hong Kong

Abstract

The present study looks at the mechanism of cultural identity negotiation that influences the cross-cultural adaptation and social integration of China's mainland students attending universities in Hong Kong. The study is based on reflexive thematic analysis of the semi-structured interviews with 25 participants, and draws on Berry’s acculturation model and Kim’s integrative communication theory of cross-cultural adaptation as a conceptual framework. The data revealed the following three themes. China's mainland students face unique acculturative stressors in the culturally ambiguous context of Hong Kong, such as linguistic marginalisation in Canton, felt discrimination and stereotyping due to being China's mainland and differences in interpersonal expectations and communication norms. Second, the participants enacted three different, but dynamic, identity negotiation strategies to deal with these challenges: heritage preservation, in which strong co-national networks and conscious management of mainland cultural practices were evident; selective adoption, in which pragmatic incorporation of surface-level local cultural elements and maintenance of core mainland values were evident; and bicultural bridging, in which trilingual code-switching, diverse cross-group social networks, and reflexive meta-cultural awareness were evident. Third, these strategies produced markedly different social integration trajectories across academic, interpersonal, and psychological dimensions, with bicultural bridging consistently associated with the most favourable outcomes across all three, while heritage preservation sustained moderate psychological well-being primarily through co-national support. Inter-coder reliability assessment yielded a Cohen's kappa of 0.82, indicating substantial agreement. The findings extend Berry's categorical acculturation model by demonstrating the situational variability and dynamic modulation of acculturation strategies, and support Kim's theory by documenting the communicative pathways underlying the stress-adaptation-growth dynamic. Practical implications are drawn for Hong Kong universities, including intercultural mentoring programmes, conversational Cantonese support, and diversity-inclusive campus communication policies.