Written by Ruchi Saini (University of Central Florida)
At a time when questions of migration and borders dominate public debate globally, Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of The Odyssey feels surprisingly timely. Although its world is populated by gods, monsters, and mythical kingdoms, its central concerns are remarkably familiar to anyone who has crossed borders: the uncertainty of leaving home, the unpredictability of the journey, and the desire for belonging. In fact, one of the most powerful moments in the movie takes place not at sea or on the battlefields, but on the remote island of Ogygia. The nymph Calypso tells Odysseus that his greatest obstacle is not the storm ahead but his need to control his fate. “Give up the fight, give up control and live. It is a leap of faith you haven’t yet made! ” she tells him. Every year, millions of international students take a similar leap of faith, leaving home to pursue higher education abroad without knowing where life will ultimately lead them. Unlike Odysseus, however, whose ten-year voyage was guided by the certainty of Ithaca, many international students discover that the longer they remain abroad, the more difficult it becomes to answer a simple question: Where is home?
Scholars of migration such as Paolo Boccagni have shown that for migrants, home is less a fixed place and more an ongoing process of creating and recreating belonging through relationships, memories, language, food, and even future aspirations. So, while for Odysseus, the journey is about returning to Ithaca, for international students, the journey is one of negotiating and discovering what home means for them under conditions of extended mobility and precarity. This negotiation and rediscovery involves moving away from a conception of home as fixed or naturalized to a more mobile, open-ended, and perhaps multi-sited notion. As an international student who was born in Kashmir, India, from where my family was forced to leave during the 1990 exodus of Kashmiri Pandits, I inherited a story of displacement even before I grew up. My own life has since stretched across multiple states in India, the United States, and the United Kingdom. So, when people ask me “Where are you from?”, I don’t have an easy answer because home to me is no longer a fixed point of origin or a final destination, but something that I have been quietly assembling all along.
Watching the movie, I was especially struck by how the ancient Greek idea of nostos (homecoming) can help us understand international students’ fluid understanding of home. For Nolan’s Odysseus, Nostos is as much about the physical journey home as it is about reclaiming the feeling of safety and peace. To be truly home, it is not enough that he reaches Ithaca; he also has to be recognized by his son Telemachus and wife Penelope, as well as defeat Penelope’s suitors to establish his kingdom’s ethical order. International students often experience a similar tension. Even though they leave their countries and cities believing they can always return to that place, years spent abroad quietly reshape their lives and identities. The home they leave continues to evolve without them, while they build new forms of belonging elsewhere.
Nolan’s reimagination of the Greek concept of xenia, referred to throughout the film as Zeus’ law, reminds us that a migrant’s sense of belonging is largely shaped by the willingness of host communities to welcome, recognize, and value them. In the movie, xenia is never about charity; instead, it is a reciprocal relationship in which the host offers the guest food and shelter, and in return, the guest is expected to behave honourably, respect the household, and reciprocate with gifts, stories, and future hospitality. International student migration rests on a similar compact. Universities and host countries offer international students learning opportunities, and in return, we are expected to contribute intellectually, culturally, and economically to the communities and homes that receive us. Yet international students are often treated unfairly as cash cows, passive recipients of opportunity, or even burdens on the very universities and economies they help sustain.
Even though Nolan’s The Odyssey is set in a world where identity and citizenship were tied to the polis (city-state), it is ultimately a story of migration that carries important lessons not only for international students, but also for the universities and countries that receive them. It reminds us that if an international student’s greatest challenge is negotiating what home (nostos) comes to mean, then the greatest responsibility of universities and host societies is to create the conditions under which that negotiation can take place (xenia). Only when both international students and the institutions that welcome them honour their respective obligations does international higher education become more than the movement of people across borders; it becomes a reciprocal project of knowledge, trust, and belonging. As Nolan reminds us, xenia is “the glue that binds society together”, and if international education is to fulfil its promise, that glue must hold.
Short Biography:
Ruchi Saini is a postdoctoral researcher in the Violence Against Women Faculty Cluster at the University of Central Florida. She is a critical education researcher whose work examines international student migration and belonging, gender-based and digital violence, and decolonial approaches to pedagogy and research.
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