Let's Talk About Grief
A multifaceted exploration of 'loss'
By Ciéra Cree
Target publication: happiful magazine -- (grief subsection: a new serial documenting non-celebrities & their stories)
 

Migration levels within the UK are at an all-time high, after a surge in young people moving abroad to study coincides with the Ukrainian refugee crisis. But should this be the government's only concern?

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By Ciéra Cree

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The UK government has been placed under strain after its borders passed record-breaking numbers of migrants into the country last year. This falls in line with the government's encouragement of international applications to British schools, in addition to its welcoming of 169,000 Ukrainian refugees.

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Although the UK's open-arms approach to accepting foreign students can be praised, the sense of cultural loss felt by the masses far from home, in itself, is somewhat of a silent epidemic.

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"I felt like I was being reborn into a place where

I couldn't [...] embrace who I was deep down."

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According to a study of the academic year 2020-21 conducted by AHZ Associates, 605,130 people moved to the UK from abroad to undertake education. Whether that decision to move was by choice, necessity, or force, students moving abroad is only one small fraction among the potential scope for international citizens feeling displaced (see Briefing Paper - UNHCR, 2015, p.2), or at a sense of loss from their roots, every day.

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Nusrat Ahmed, 23, is an international student who moved to the UK from Bangladesh in 2017. Currently studying for a Bachelor's degree in English Language and Linguistics, Ahmed knows firsthand how heavy the weight of seeking a better quality of life can be on a young person's shoulders.

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"I moved to the UK in 2017, but it is my mum who pushed me here," Ahmed says. "To come to the UK to build myself up into something more than a girl who exists to just listen to and marry a man. She went through that, and so did her own mother, despite their thirst for education. No one wanted me to go through the same."

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In this way, Ahmed is a young woman atypical of her culture, seeking to abolish a generational narrative of toxicity woven throughout the history of women within her family. But in taking steps to break away from a cultural norm, Ahmed has been left with acute scars of detachment and loss relating to her identity.

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"I describe leaving Bangladesh as a loss of self identity because I'm not the person that I was anymore," Ahmed says. "My concepts have changed, my thought processes have changed. Part of me still misses the girl that I was, but to move forward I knew that I had no option but to let go of my old self."

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From slower-paced days spent in the abundant heat and colours of Asia, to ones spent adapting to an independent existence among the UK's weather, cuisines and absence of traditional celebration, Ahmed describes being thrown into a "new life" as a journey of simultaneous rebirth and grief: a knowing that her quality of life would improve, but having to mourn all that she has previously known and loved to get there.

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"I left my friends and a whole world behind, and it's so scary to start everything from scratch in a fresh space," Ahmed says. "It felt like I was being reborn into a place where I couldn't wear my colourful dresses and embrace who I was deep down."​

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Fatima Lakhani, 24, former international student and current Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Adviser (EDI), describes how international students are placed under a constant sense of surveillance and restriction. They are allowed to miss home, but not too much as that would be ungrateful and warrant questioning.

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"It's hard for people like us to reveal to others that we're struggling or miss home," Lakhani says. "Native students, for instance, may question, "Why did you leave if you miss your country so much?" or say "You chose to do this". It makes saying nothing easier, as then an international student can't create a potential opportunity for such comments and misunderstandings to happen."

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This is a sentiment shared by Madhur Bari, 28, former Kings College student and current postmaster at Newington Green Post Office, who moved to London from India to undertake a Business degree. Working in a highly people-centred job, Bari emphasises the importance of feeling as though an international citizen fits into their new country.

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"A lot of people pretend to be okay so that they can fit in and carry on with their lives," Bari says. "We don't want to appear weak in front of other people or potentially be taken advantage of."

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Despite the pain of losing her old self, Ahmed acknowledges that moving to a new country brings with it many forms of good.

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“Next year I will be getting a UK passport and count as a British Bangladeshi citizen,” Ahmed says. “Although it's sad to be losing my nationality, too, I really want the passport and its freedoms, such as letting me travel. It makes me feel very capable.”

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Dr Laura Davies, 43, leader of 'A Good Death' and Cambridge University lecturer, describes the juxtaposing sense of pain and personal growth felt by Ahmed in academic terms of a "grief diagram": a diagram where a person is shown to grow around their grief, instead of the inverse.

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A diagram depicting grief, first conceptualised by Dr Lois Tonkin (1996).

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"As time passes, you get bigger in comparison to grief's circle, learning to better cope with loss and continuing to grow around it," Davies says. "What was once initially ten times bigger than you, you learn to live with, even if it doesn't change you entirely, or at all, for the "better"."

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As migration levels continue to rise, those coming to the UK from abroad can only hope that the country's understanding of their fears and losses will begin to rise in unison.

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