This paper contributes to an understanding of the ways in which not being bound to the nation of education, in legal and cultural terms, excludes international students. Based on narrative interviews with 20 students from 6 countries, the paper considers a range of difficulties international students encounter in social and educational domains in which they are interacting and, utilising the conceptual framework of 'nation-boundedness', explains these difficulties. The analysis offers new insights in terms of the role of emotions that were seen in the research to be a new discursive practice, prompting international students to marginalise their rights and voices and not to exercise rights that could protect them from discrimination and racism. The paper concludes that by considering emotions alongside regulatory structures that are established for international students in the receiving countries, a more complex understanding of the ways in which lack of 'nation-boundedness' excludes can be developed.