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As universities worldwide rapidly internationalise, highereducation classrooms havebecome unique spaces for collaboration between students from different countries. One com-mon way to encourage collaboration between diverse peers is through group work. However,previous research has highlighted that cross-cultural group work can be challenging and hashinted at potential social tensions. To understand this notion better, we have used robustquantitative tools in this study to select 20 participants from a larger classroom of 860 studentsto take part in an in-depth qualitative interview about cross-cultural group work experiences.Participant views on social tensions in cross-cultural group work were elicited using a uniquemediating artefact method to encourage reflection and in-depth discussion. In our analysis ofemergent interview themes, we compared student perspectives on the role of social relation-ships in group work by their academic performance level. Our findings indicated that allstudents interviewed desired the opportunity to form social relationships with their group workmembers, but their motivations for doing so varied widely by academic performance level.