In Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In the Heights, protagonist Nina sings a song called ‘Breathe’ which never fails to give me chills: “Hey, guys, it’s me! / The biggest disappointment you know / The kid couldn’t hack it, she’s back and she’s walkin’ real slow.” As the first person in her immigrant family to go to college, she returns to New York after a year on the west coast and gives voice to what I think is a feeling that many students here can probably relate to: the fear of disappointing those at home, the anxiety that comes with not living up to the expectations that come with the privilege of studying abroad.

In the wake of The Guardian’s finding that the Home Office is considering cutting international student numbers at UK universities by nearly half, and, of course, Donald Trump’s heinously xenophobic, racist, and Islamophobic immigration ban, I’ve been thinking a lot about what it actually means to be an international student (to countries in the West especially). Because despite continually being told that we are not welcome, that we are not wanted, we keep coming back – through the feelings of displacement and discomfort, the ignorant comments, the exorbitant fees and, in some cases, the racism and xenophobia. The question, then, is why?

The cop-out answer is that every international student has a different set of reasons for going abroad. When it comes to Cambridge in particular, the answer probably includes the institution’s ‘prestige’ (founded, ahem, on centuries of Western epistemic colonialism), and the attendant promise of academic and intellectual rigour, as well as the wealth (quite literally) of potential future opportunities. Familial and/or other types of pressure play a role, and so too does the prospect of international ‘social mobility’ (no matter how nebulous that term is). For some, the idea of living independently in a world away from home is a major boost; for others, coming to Cambridge means gaining or (re)claiming access to a pool of resources (ahem, reparations) that will help them make the world a better, fairer place. Many of us do so in light of immense privilege: we have the means, or we have sourced the means through our respective national governments or other organisations to study abroad. We can afford to leave our homes behind (not just financially but because, for example, we don’t have duties of care) to pursue education elsewhere.

“The experience of alienation and isolation that comes with being ‘one of the only ones’ of a particular identity group in your year, college, and course.”

These reasons are less important to me when talking to other international students than how we are each navigating the in-between: how do we recount our experiences to those who might never see our university with their own eyes, never feel the weight of history that bears down on us every time we step outside? If you’re lucky, you get to be 100 per cent honest with your friends and family about both the joys and pressures of university life. You get to tell them about the strangeness of formal dinners in age-old halls, and other people’s sincere fascination with where you’re from – whether you eat dogs, or believe unquestioningly in authoritarian dictatorship. You can be unabashed in your criticism of your institution, knowing that your loved ones accept that your existence there matters more than the institution itself.

If not, you learn to straighten your spine and smile when asked about your experiences over Skype – to describe the strange weather, the odd and polite way strangers offer you tea, instead of how much you miss home. (And, of course, home is not the same for everyone, but regardless of whether it’s your ancestral home or the local noodle shop, it is always just out of reach). You don’t talk about the number of evenings you spend wondering why you decided to leave in the first place. You lie by omission, for fear of being accused as ungrateful for the opportunities you’ve been given to spread your wings, or more often than not for fear of worrying loved ones who can’t practically do anything to help you – even then, you have to time your moments of sadness to align with the appropriate time zones. You tell the partial truth so not to disappoint those who see in Cambridge something bigger than yourself, a marker of a success previously believed unattainable by people like you.

Of course, I’m not saying that this is an experience unique to international students – everyone encounters disorientation when they first enter university, and this can be even harder and persist for much longer for those who experience overlapping structures of oppression on the basis of race, class, and disability, for example. Raise the weight of this experience to the power of 10 at Cambridge, an institution originally built for a tiny subsection of the world’s population, and you would still remain unable to fully articulate the experience of alienation and isolation that comes with being ‘one of the only ones’ of a particular identity group in your year, college, and course.

But over the last year, I’ve encountered people who have made the argument to me that the privilege of being able to study abroad makes up for the ignorance and oppression that international students face as they pursue their degrees.

Ethnic minority, tourist majority?

There is an overwhelming lack of understanding among the latter about the diverse experiences of international students. There is the startling experience of being racialised for the first time, the continual fumbling for of words to describe the process of becoming a minority to yourself, the pressure of becoming a proxy for your entire country and culture, the camaraderie that comes with meeting someone else who also went through your school system, and the joy of finding a supermarket that sells a version of your favourite comfort food. Add to that the constant self-questioning and self-rationalisation of what, if anything, makes being away worth it. In turn, there is an ignorance of or perhaps an unwillingness to engage fully with both the privileges and problematic aspects of the experience of studying as an international student. This is not a judgement so much as a recognition that in many cases it is easier to not engage, to try to survive the three-year degree and take comfort in communities that already ‘get it’.

In my own experience, learning to articulate my experiences in terms of 'Othering' was incredibly healing. It allowed me to understand myself not in isolation, but always in context. It taught me the importance of engaging with my communities and expressing and acting in solidarity with others who, despite not having the same experiences, made the effort to relate and to care, and whose own issues were important and in need of attention.

In this political climate, there is no better time to think of existing in the interstices as an identity that can be mobilised in recognition of both our differences but also our capacity for solidarity. This begins with acknowledging that although each of us may be forging an existence in Cambridge in our own way, we do have things in common and fights to rally behind together. Ultimately, if we learn anything of value from our time here, it’s not going to come from books or lectures, but from each other.