Rebirth at the Border

By José Eduardo Martínez Torres

The Graduate Press team asked non-EU/EFTA students how the process of migrating has been experienced. In times when uncertainty narratives prevail, labor markets are resenting a funding crunch and migration policies are being tightened, it seemed necessary to raise awareness on how deciding to study abroad is a rupture: with language, family, certainty, and sometimes with the person they used to be.

At the Institute, it is easy to assume that mobility is normal. Students arrive from different countries, move between languages, discuss global affairs, and prepare for careers in international institutions, NGOs, governments, academia, or diplomacy. In this environment, studying abroad can appear almost ordinary: a natural stage in a well-planned professional life. Yet this experience is not the same for everyone. For many international students, coming to Geneva is not simply a change of university. It is a deep personal transition marked by distance, uncertainty, administrative pressure, financial sacrifice, and the difficult task of building a new sense of belonging.

This is not to suggest that European students do not face challenges when they study abroad. Many do. Leaving home, adapting to a new city, and studying in a foreign language can be difficult for anyone. But for non-EU students, the move often carries a different weight. It usually involves crossing not only a national border, but also a legal, economic, and emotional boundary. The right to stay is conditional. The cost of living may be radically different from what one’s family is used to. The currency gap matters. Visa rules matter. Work restrictions matter. The possibility of going home for a weekend is often not realistic. Even the idea of “home” starts to change.

Mobility is not experienced equally. For some, studying in Geneva may be an enriching chapter. For others, it is a gamble. A non-EU student often arrives carrying the hopes of a family, the pressure of limited resources, and the knowledge that failure is not only personal. In some cases, you may disappoint people who helped you in your journey. In others, it may mean returning home with debt, uncertainty, or the feeling of having failed to transform sacrifice into opportunity.

In conversations with two fellow students at the Institute, this feeling was a common denominator. Their experiences confirmed something many of us have but do not always say openly: studying abroad often requires leaving behind an old version of yourself. You leave behind your usual confidence, because suddenly you do not express yourself as easily as in your native language. You leave behind your comfort zone, because the references, jokes, and habits that once made you feel at home are no longer work in the same way. You leave behind the comfort of being understood without explanation. In Geneva, you may be highly educated, ambitious, and capable, yet still feel like a beginner in ordinary life.

Then, to accurate yourself with the city doesn’t automatically arrive with your admission. It must be built. Non-EU students create it through small acts: learning basic French phrases, sharing food from home, forming friendships with people who understand distance, joining student initiatives, calling family across time zones, finding a favorite café, walking across Geneva until the city feels less foreign. These gestures may seem minor, but they are forms of survival. They are ways of saying: we are not only passing through; we are also trying to exist here.

This matters especially in a time when nationalist narratives are gaining strength across Europe. Migration is often discussed as a problem to be managed, a pressure to be reduced, or a threat to cultural identity. International students may be treated more politely than other migrants, but they are not outside this climate. Non-EU students also feel the weight of borders, suspicion, and conditional welcome. They are praised as “global talent” while still being reminded that their presence depends on permits, rules, and institutional approval. There is a subtle but clear message: you may belong, but only temporarily.

The theme of this edition, “Rebirth: Saisir l’avenir” captures this experience well. For non-EU students, rebirth is not a romantic metaphor. It is a demanding process. It means learning how to speak again, how to ask for help, how to build a community, how to accept loneliness without being defeated by it, and how to imagine a future in a place that does not fully promise you one. To “seize the future” is not only to pursue ambition. It is to insist that the sacrifices made to arrive here can become meaningful.

The Institute often teaches us to analyze borders, inequality, migration, and identity in abstract terms. But these issues also live in our classrooms, kitchens, residences, and student initiatives. They reside in the quiet effort of those who are trying to fit while carrying another world inside them. Recognizing this does not divide students into competing categories of hardship. Rather, it asks us to see mobility more honestly.

For some students, Geneva is a destination. For others, it is a border. Crossing it means losing fragments of oneself, but also discovering new ones. That is the difficult promise of rebirth: not becoming someone entirely different but learning how to carry what was left behind while still moving toward what comes next.