Preparing to Migrate. Second Place in the International Week UNAM 2022 Writing Contest

The term education is generally associated with school. It is believed that education is measured by academic degrees or even manners. My experience with international mobility proved to me that the least needed education in the real world is precisely the one dictated by an average or a framed paper hanging on the wall.

Indeed, the opportunity I had to migrate for half a year to another continent would not have been possible without my academic record, the reputation of my university, and a thousand other things of which I probably have no idea, even the sacrifices that academics and workers of the university and of the country carry out every day to make cooperation efforts a reality, as well as thousands of taxpayers who, through paying their taxes, contributed to the scholarship with which I was able to partially finance my studies. However, I would like to share the other types of education: those that the experience brought to me.

Many people believe that migration process begins the moment you board the plane to your destination, the first time you face the supermarket, or when you try to make yourself understood in whatever language you can, which even involves the use of signs. I thought my migration process began when I was on the German embassy’s waiting list, without having the slightest idea of how many weeks the process would take. I was really surprised to hear my roommates stories in the German student residence, for whom migration was not a process of a year or a year and a half, but a plan of even decades. Abhi was born in India, where she made a degree in English, her third language, in order to emigrate; a very common practice in that country, where almost all technology-related careers are taught in English. Her fourth language is German, as she intends to live in Germany for at least five years. Wejdene is from Tunisia. She migrated to Germany as an international student and extended her stay to complete the mandatory internship required by her university for a degree. She intends to reside in Germany to work there indefinitely.

Mariem, from Mauritania, is in the same situation. They both have had to take mandatory tests each year at their home university to test their level of English, French, and Arabic. As a consequence of Mauritania’s and Tunisia’s colonial past, their academic systems keep French structures and, because of this, revalidation of their curricula is often not required.

They, my classmates, and roommates as well, like Zakarias, Asis, Hamsa, and Anas from Morocco, Paul and Joaquín from Peru, Komal from India, Kate from Belarus, Andrei from Bolivia, Diana from Colombia, Matías from Ecuador, Sabrina from Costa Rica, among many other people I met at Eichendorffring Y-Haus, in Giessen, Frankfurt, Germany, as well as in other parts of Europe, taught me that there is such a thing as migration education. As exaggerated as it may seem, you never know if you will have to migrate.

It may be that your country is not in a situation where you need to flee, like Anas from Palestine and Fjolla and Belerina from Kosovo. A war may break out in your country and your family will try to preserve your life, like the Ukrainian students and refugees who are among us since March, or like Azad and his family, who have been refugees from Syria for ten years. Or it may be that your country’s government may be so corrupt that you prefer to migrate, like Tolga from Turkey.

We all lived in a country foreign to us, to our cultures and our homes, in a language that is not our mother-tongue. We were frustrated trying to share our worldviews in poor translations, helping ourselves with images found on the internet, and trying to describe flavors, colors, and smells of our places of origin. But we felt fulfilled when the recipient of the message smiled and acknowledged that he or she would like to visit your country.

Migration education in the academy starts, I believe, with language. Although many of us conduct our university studies in our native languages, when we become international students, we are fluent in at least two languages, which translates into years of studying grammar, phonetics, and semantics.

Securing the language is a small part of learning how to migrate. Next part are administrative questions: Which migration options do you have for the degree you want? Which countries can you migrate to because of the demand for that degree? Which revalidation procedures must you carry out? Which universities in your country are the best recognized in the world? Is it better to pay for private higher education in your home country than to emigrate and study in another continent?

This is very much related to economics and labor: What jobs can you have in the country you are migrating to while studying? What do you need to compete in the labor market? What is the minimum amount the embassy requires to prove you can support yourself? How much do you have to pay for rent and services? How much can your parents afford? What can you afford? These are widely known issues in migrant education, but experience showed me that very few of us were able to demonstrate we could cope with them: education to be a functional adult. Food preparation, cleaning of our belongings and common areas, grocery shopping, and so on.

While Moroccan friends happily prepared their local dishes daily and shared them with their guests, I also saw my fellow Mexicans ignoring how to chop vegetables and fruits, having no idea if the protein was raw or not. They even called me once to ask me how to make guacamole. They would go six months without buying any spices, and they would even ask me how to bake box brownies. Total ignorance about grocery shopping, cooking, washing, cleaning, and getting supplies, among many other things. I was shocked because it would benefit no one but them, and yet they had no interest in learning how to fulfill their basic needs.

I include in this category the ability to solve bureaucratic needs. Buying a SIM card in Germany is a procedure that takes at least an hour. Or the German public health insurance, and the public transportation system. In general, dealing with life in a highly regulated system, and in a language in which you are not fluent enough.

They don’t teach us to migrate in Mexico. It is suggested, of course, but we are not prepared. These considerations do not exist; we dream of opportunities such as this one for student mobility, but we are not trained in them. I don’t think there is a perfect handbook, but I think we can do better if we avoid romanticizing migration. Of course it’s worth it, but you certainly won’t live an incredible adventure each day.

Migrating, even for a short period, is not easy. Because in another country, nothing belongs to you. The student dormitory can charge you for the smallest thing, but when you demand that your contract be honored, no one cares. Discrimination aon the basis of a “different” appearance or a different language. 861 euros a month seems like a million pesos, but sometimes it is not enough to fully cover basic needs.

The 23 kilos you packed cannot include your mom’s hugs, your dad’s words, the sweet potatoes’ car noise, the markets, the smell of the cempaxúchitl flower, your aunt’s sauce… And so many other things whose absence hurts, especially when the sun sets at five in the afternoon and the nights are below zero degrees.

Six months after your arrival, the moment when you put your life in two suitcases is in front of you. Saying goodbye to everyone and leaving the apartment you now call home hurts. Icy days don’t sound so bad now that your friends go out with you to watch the early morning’s snow; when despite having rainstorms, not going alone to the grocery store is the best journey you can embark on; because when you got sick with COVID-19, you would find a cup of tea, a soup bowl or a hamburger outside your room; because when we are all away from home, our neighbors become our family.

I feel incredibly fortunate for the opportunity the University has given me. I would like to say that being able to know different academic levels was a great experience, but there was no compari - son point. In all the classes I took and visited, our university demonstrates why it has a place at the top of Latin America and even within the world’s best 100.

This is why I would like to say a huge thank you, as well as my recognition to the teachers and aca - demics who, during the last ten years that I have been part of UNAM, have helped me to form a critical spirit that allows me to learn from the aca - demy but be able to reflect and to question in prac - tice, more than nine thousand kilometers away.

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