This article discusses how university students from French minority settings in Canada build their identity. This microsociology research is based on the analysis of 21 biographic interviews with Francophone students from Saskatchewan, Ontario and New Brunswick, who chose to pursue university studies in Québec City. The data were analysed from a symbolic interactionism perspective. In this approach, identity is considered as the result of the social interactions that individuals engage in during the course of their lifespan. The analyses of interaction episodes show that contact with Québécois leads to a negotiation of the students’ identity, in the sense that they either change the intensity of some aspects of their identity or integrate new dimensions of identity. Experiencing mobility and contact with the other, different from oneself, leads to a more acute awareness of differences from others, and of one’s own identity.