The Fourth Year Abroad: When Adaptation Ends and Identity Begins

The fourth year of life in emigration often becomes a strange and unsettling point. On the surface, life looks stable: documents are in order, rent is renewed, daily routines feel familiar, and the panic of the first months is long gone. You know how the supermarket works, you have favorite places, and you no longer feel like a tourist. Yet internally, many people experience a deep sense of suspension, as if life is happening in a corridor between a former home that no longer feels safe or morally acceptable and a new place that still does not feel fully like home. Migration researchers describe this state through the concept of liminality, a condition of being in between social roles and identities. For many Russians who left after 2022, this liminality is intensified by political and ethical rupture: the country of origin is associated with danger, shame, or powerlessness, while the host country often offers safety without full belonging due to language barriers, legal uncertainty, or subtle exclusion. Psychological models of adaptation show that the early years of migration are dominated by practical survival tasks, such as housing, work, and legal status, but once these are resolved, a deeper phase begins in which questions of identity, meaning, and long term belonging surface. At this stage, people may feel unable to plan the future, hesitant to invest in careers or relationships, and emotionally fragmented, as if they are pretending everywhere and fully present nowhere. Research on bicultural identity suggests that those who can accept multiple cultural parts of themselves as compatible tend to experience greater inner stability, while those who perceive their identities as conflicting often struggle with anxiety, guilt, and emotional exhaustion. The difficulty of the fourth year lies in the fact that it exposes these inner conflicts clearly: adaptation to everyday life is complete, but psychological integration has only just begun. This period is not a sign of failure or ingratitude, but a natural consequence of living through displacement, moral rupture, and prolonged uncertainty. Allowing oneself to remain in transition without demanding immediate clarity can become the foundation for a more sustainable identity, one that is built gradually rather than imposed under pressure.