Sammendrag
The high school student body at the International School of Stavanger located in Stavanger, Norway is made up of students from fifteen nations. More than sixty percent of high school students are internationally mobile, but a sizeable percentage of local students also attend the school. This thesis seeks to show that the marked heterogeneity in the student body is counterbalanced by several homogenizing forces. First, the fact that difference is the norm compels students to bond across cultural barriers to the point where nationality, culture, ethnicity, native language and socio-economic status diminish in importance as factors in the forming of social networks. Second, ISS is a private school which only accepts students who will be able to profit from the ambitious academic program. Third, academic pressures tend to negatively affect the amount of time given to students’ social lives. Fourth, in what free time students have, they can take part in a wide range of after school extra-curricular activities. Fifth, the high school is quite small, which limits students’ social options. Sixth, ISS is to some extent a bubble environment where outside contact with the host culture is limited. These forces combine to create the stereotypical ISS student: bright, hard-working, focused, sensitive to cultural difference, but somewhat disconnected from his or her home culture as well as from the host culture in which he or she lives.