Concept of friendship among Russian university students in the Czech Republic

The study is concerned with the perception and experience of the phenomenon of friendship among Russian university students in the Czech Republic, considering its relation to the complex context of their life and adaptation to the mainstream Czech society. The research problem is approached from a combination of sociological, psychological, anthropological as well as cognitive-linguistic perspectives. The main research questions focus on the perception and experience of friendship among young representatives of the Russian minority in the Czech Republic and the meaning attributed to this phenomenon in the participants' lives with a special emphasis on the context of living and studying abroad. The study is based on an original qualitative research, conducted as an interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). The data were obtained via in-depth semi-structured interviews and analysed in accordance with the IPA methodology with respect to the whole context of the participants' lives.