Becoming “One of Them”: What Studying Migration in Copenhagen Taught Me

It happened in a moment so brief I could have missed it. I was standing at Parea on the island of Lesvos, speaking in Arabic with one of the refugees there. I was explaining—somewhat awkwardly—what I, an Egyptian student, was doing there with a group of American classmates studying International Refugee Law. As we spoke, another man walked by. “He is also from Gaza,” Mohamed told me. Then, pointing at me, he added with a smile, “She is from Egypt.” The man looked at me for a second and said, almost casually: “I knew when I saw her. She looked like one of us.” I didn’t respond at the time. But that sentence stayed with me.

Because in that moment, something shifted: I was no longer just a student observing migration. I was, in some ways, inside it.

The Border Is Not Just a Line

Before coming to Copenhagen, I thought of borders as physical things—lines on a map, checkpoints, visa stamps. But what I learned, both in the classroom and on that study tour, is that borders don’t stop at the edge of a country. They live in systems, in language, and sometimes, in people’s eyes. One of the guys there told me about his journey: rejected twice for a visa, forced into irregular routes, detained in Turkey, beaten by police, and eventually making it to Lesvos on his second attempt. During his asylum interview, the interpreter mistranslated his story. His words—his life—were being rewritten in real time, and he didn’t have the language to take it back.

That kind of moment changes how you understand power.

The border isn’t just something you cross. It’s something that can speak for you.

Who Gets to Move—and Why

Back in Copenhagen, in one of my classes, we learned about the idea that Denmark’s welfare state was built for a “homogeneous” society. Immigration, we were told, complicated that foundation. One phrase stuck with me: “It is the host, not the guests, who decides the menu.” At first, it sounded harmless—almost like common sense. But the more I sat with it, the more unsettling it became. Because what does it mean to always be a “guest”? To be tolerated, perhaps even welcomed—but only conditionally?

This question followed me beyond the classroom. It shaped how I interpreted everything: from policies restricting asylum seekers to conversations with migrants in Copenhagen, to our visit to a deportation center where rejected asylum seekers are left in limbo. I remember standing outside that center after listening to our host describe how Denmark had broken someone who had survived one of the most brutal prisons in Syria. He looked like my father. And suddenly, the distance between “them” and “me” collapsed.

The Illusion of Choice

Technically, I had choices. I could apply to graduate school in Denmark. I could build a career there. I could become the kind of migrant that states want: educated, skilled, legible. But that realization came with discomfort. Because the more I learned, the more I understood that mobility is not simply about ambition or hard work. It is filtered—quietly but powerfully—through ideas of worthiness. Who has the “right” passport? Who looks like they belong? Who can prove their value?

And perhaps most importantly: who gets to move without having to justify their existence?

I began to see my own mobility differently—not as a neutral opportunity, but as something shaped by the same system that restricts others.

What We Don’t Hear

One of the things that frustrated me most during our study tour was how rarely we heard directly from people still going through the asylum process. We listened to experts, lawyers, humanitarian workers—people who do important work. But the voices of those most affected were often missing, or filtered. And when we did hear from refugees, it was often from those whose lives had already stabilized—those who had, in some way, “made it.”

Why is that? Why is it easier to listen to people once their stories are complete?

It made me wonder how much knowledge exists within these journeys that we never take seriously. How many systems, strategies, and forms of expertise remain invisible because they don’t come from institutions we recognize.

The Borders We Carry

What stayed with me most from this semester wasn’t just what I learned about policies or migration systems. It was what I learned about perception—my own, and others’.

That moment in Lesvos, when a stranger told me I looked like “one of them,” forced me to confront something uncomfortable: the boundaries I thought I was studying were also shaping me. Not just how others see me, but how I see others.

It is easy to critique borders when they appear as walls or laws. It is harder to recognize the quieter ones, the ones that determine whose voice we trust, whose story we listen to, and who we subconsciously see as “like us.”

So Why Not Denmark?

People often ask whether I would go back to Denmark, whether I would build a life there. The honest answer is complicated. I didn’t dislike it. In many ways, I loved my time there. But what I gained from that experience was not just appreciation—it was awareness. Awareness of how belonging can be conditional. Of how openness can be selective. Of how systems that appear fair can still exclude.

And once you see that, it’s difficult to unsee.

Final Thought

That man in Lesvos probably doesn’t remember me. But I remember what he said.

Because in a single sentence, he collapsed the distance I thought existed between observer and subject, student and migrant, “us” and “them.” And maybe that’s the most important thing I learned: The border is not always something we encounter. Sometimes, it’s something we carry.