Travel Barriers, Health Stresses: How COVID-19 Affected Indians Studying Abroad

From language barriers to mental health issues, Indian students studying abroad faced lot of issues during pandemic.

With the onset of the global health crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, most EU countries closed their national borders to contain the spread of the virus, and many universities were also closed for a time during the pandemic.

(Photo: Shruti Mathur/ The Quint)

(This is the second part of the two-article series on pandemic time experiences of Indian student who are studying in Europe. The first part can be read here.)

With the onset of the global health crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, most European countries closed their national borders to contain the spread of the virus, and many universities were also closed for a time during the pandemic.

Many students came back in a rush to escape being locked inside a foreign country for indefinite period. Among those were students like Anita Kumar, a student of Erasmus Mundus scholarship Master’s programme in Literature studies in Università di Bologna in Italy who had to abruptly head back home when the situation with the pandemic worsened in Italy in the beginning of 2020.

'Had To Produce Lot of Medical Proofs to Justify Sudden Travel Back Home'

As a graduating student, she feels it was one of the worst times to go through an academic transition phase, not to mention one without any celebrations or memories of the last university days.

She said that “in spite of the extraordinary sanitary circumstances created by the pandemic, all those scholarship students of my study programme who had taken the repatriation flights, had to produce a lot of medical proofs and receipts to justify our sudden travels back to our home countries.”

But not all students who wished could return. Devika Sharma, another graduating student carrying out her final semester of Erasmus Mundus master's in Crossways in cultural narratives in Università degli Studi di Bergamo in Italy, couldn’t go back home because she had contracted COVID-19 during the first massive outbreak of the pandemic.

Language a Barrier in Treatment

"It was horrible. I couldn’t even breathe properly. I couldn’t go back home; my family was worried and then I contacted the Indian embassy in Italy but the only thing they could offer was the schedule of the next repatriation flights and I clearly wasn’t in a condition to travel nor did I want to infect my family members. I couldn’t even find any doctor because nobody was able to speak in English with me and I don’t speak Italian, so, I couldn’t explain my situation. Finally, it was a friend’s mother who was Italian who found an ambulance for me in Milan. They came to check me at home briefly because they said that since there’s a shortage of beds and that I am comparatively doing better than many other ongoing severe cases, so they refused to quarantine or give me a hospital bed. This is one of the most horrible memories for me now, of being away from home and in such a condition. Thankfully my flatmates were considerate and they would try to get food and medicine for me and leave it at the front of my door to pick it up.”

There was commendable resilience and solidarity that the student community showed when the going got tough during the pandemic. Devika isn’t the only one to have pointed out language difficulty playing a role in making it more difficult than usual to deal with the sanitary situation in a foreign country.

Gangadhar Shankar Jyayi, a self-funded engineering student at Poznan Technical University in Poland, says,

The restaurants, delivery jobs and taxi services were all very much affected sectors during the pandemic and all the other student jobs were difficult for me to get since most of the people wanted language competency in Polish.

Gangadhar Shankar Jyayi

Taniya Kapoor, a student of Computer Science and Maths in the Université de Lille remembers language to be the only barrier when it came to leading everyday life during the pandemic. She says, “Everything was fine with the way university was trying to function and they were even trying to keep regular checks on our mental health by sending somebody door to door to talk to us but most of the time I wasn’t able to communicate with them because I do not speak French. Often student and other organisations in the university would distribute meals or grocery or other products to students in exile during the pandemic but I would only get to know afterwards since I couldn’t understand the flyers or announcements made in French for the same.”

Students Who Could Not Return Home Had To Face Social Barriers Too

While most of the students returned back to India, the ones who were left stranded in their study countries had to face not only linguistic but social challenges as well. Almost all the students interviewed told us about a drastic change in their daily life routine and lifestyle.

Rachita Sundariyal, a student of Sociology at the Université de Lille in France says that for almost a year she hadn’t even seen faces of all of her classmates or met them in real life.

“Since the time I had arrived in Lille in 2020, we only had online classes. The entire day we had classes and then by the time the classes got over in the evening, we hardly got an hour or two before the curfew time. So, social life basically meant coordinating with fellow classmates for grocery shopping at the same time.”

For some who had a normal student life in Europe before the pandemic, the situation became intimidating with the outbreak. An Erasmus Mundus scholarship student, Tenzin Khentse, who was studying transnational migration in Wroclaw University in Poland at the time says that due to his appearance he had to stay confined to his house which was a mentally stressful period for him.

Constantly Changing Travel Rules Another Source of Stress

For me personally, looking like a mongoloid Asian, especially in a country where the majority of the population is composed of white people and where a lot of racist and hate crime incidents were going around the country, it was very difficult situation. I was very scared because with my Asian features and the virus originating in China, it made me very uncomfortable to step outside. My only direction was to go to Zabka and Biedronkas (supermarkets) during the initial months.

Tenzin Khentse

However, Tenzin also mentions that after situation got better in Europe, he regained his social life.

For some students like Maitreya, an Erasmus Mundus scholarship student of Soil Science and Climate Change at the Ghent University, sometimes the stress was also due to the constantly changing rules in the country of residence.

He tells us, “Belgium had a more friendly approach during the second lockdown which was only partial. When I had arrived, the close contact was limited to having one hugging buddy outside the household and you could receive inside your houses four guests maximum and always the same ones in your vicinity. However, the rules and regulations were constantly changing, so you really had to follow the news every day.”

Divya Satyanarayanan, doing PhD in an international collaboration programme under the Marie Skladowska Curie Action-Innovative Training Networks in Zurich, Switzerland also agrees that to avoid any confusions and difficulties within Europe it was necessary to keep yourself updated with the changing zones and travel restrictions.

Lockdowns Affected Students' Physical & Mental Well-Being

“My research is completely based on field and lab work. So, for research and analysis I have to go to various places for secondment. Already many of my research visits had been cancelled. And then I finally got to go to Dijon in France which unfortunately became a red zone after my arrival. It meant that I had to do an RT-PCR test and then quarantine myself. Thankfully PCR tests were being done for free in France because if it would have been vice versa, I’d have paid so much more in Zurich.”

When lockdowns were imposed in European countries, the students reported having effects on their mental as well as physical well-being. Manav Khanna, pursuing a PhD in Management in Sustainability, Innovation, and Healthcare at Santanna University in Pisa, Italy said in a joking manner, “Well, the biggest personal issue during pandemic for me honestly was the weight I had put on. I just became very fat.”

Pratap Singh Rathore, a student of Master in Management-Financial Engineering and Innovation in Finance and MSc in Corporate Finance and FinTech from Ecole Supérieure de Commerce in Clermont-Ferrand in France tells us that he was trying to manage his physical fitness even during lockdowns.

Some Universities Made Efforts To Reduce Stress Among Students

“I couldn’t meet my friends or new people. I am a volunteer at an organisation so could organise events between the first and second wave of Corona but after second wave everything went online again. My internship also got cancelled. You keep sitting in a room with eyes stuck to your screen in online classes. And since we couldn’t play any outside sports, it was not easy to remain physically fit. But well, I had to put efforts and somehow I managed.” In spite of the ups and downs, Pratap remains certain about his bright future in the French job market.

At the same time there were some universities which were actively trying to reduce the stress amongst students by making them feel more connected to their peers and communities in order to help them fight isolation and not feel depressed during the tough periods of lockdowns and curfews.

Shubham Chowdhury who was left alone in the pandemic after his friends and flatmates returned to their homes during the final semester of his MSc in Cyber Risk for Business in University College Cork in Ireland takes this stressful and depressing experience of managing lockdown, isolation, graduation, job preparation along with household chores in a positive light and as a learning curve.

'It Was Difficult To Find a Hospital or a Doctor or a Testing Centre'

He says, “The university took information about our culture and language so that they could organise the people of the same type who would be able to reach out to each other directly. We had created assisting and informing groups of people near our locations who would communicate and take care of each other. Also, there was support of the Indian society here and in case of any problems and troubles we could reach out to them.”

While in some places the university was collaborating with students to help them cope with the situation, in other places it was purely the student networks that took it upon themselves to reach out to each other.

Krishnanath Chathoth who is doing master’s in public policy and management in the International Institute of Social Studies in The Hague tells us that his university did not pay much attention to the minute details regarding the resources that affected the student community.

“It was difficult to find a hospital or a doctor or a testing centre. Social life was very pathetic, classes were fluctuating between online and in person mode. Libraries were inaccessible. It’s the student network that helped to a certain extent.”

After all the efforts put out by students as well as authorities to cope with the situation, the fact still remains that the pandemic has affected lives of many students who had joined a programme with a certain outline but ended up graduating from a course that they probably wouldn’t have even applied for in the first place.

Ritika Pushkar, an MBA student at WHU- Otto Beisheim School of Management in Düsseldorf, Germany tells us, “I had a very good GMAT score and I could have chosen any course anywhere but my MBA had international modules – in US, China and India which is the biggest reason why I had chosen this particular MBA programme. But because of the COVID we are not doing any of the international modules since we can’t travel. I had already paid in advance, so, I couldn’t back out, otherwise I probably would have. It might impact my placements maybe since it was supposed to be a big part of my MBA profile.”

However, students like Ritika who recently started their studies hope to graduate in a healthy way in a post pandemic world. As Ritika adds, “But in the end the university is trying to handle the situation in the best way possible. And as long as I am physically and mentally healthy, I know I’ll be fine.”

The interviews have clearly shown that in spite of the tough experiences and challenges that the student community from India had to face in Europe during the COVID-19 pandemic, what motivated them to continue with their studies is partly the way things were handled by their university and destination country and partly due to their own resilience and optimistic attitude towards the situation, often as a collective network of students in exile helping each other.

(Richa Sharma is an intern at India Migration Now (IMN), a research and advocacy organisation based out of Mumbai. This piece is produced as part of her internship at the IMN. She is also currently an Erasmus Mundus scholarship student in the field of transnational migrations and holds an MPhil in French translation and interpretation from Jawaharlal Nehru University. The views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)