Background: Student mobility carries mental health and well-being risks, particularly when transition-related needs are hidden by formal student categories.

Objective: This short communication examines Moldovan students with Romanian citizenship in Romanian higher education. Legally classified as domestic, they may undergo an international-like adjustment involving linguistic, cultural, academic, and relational transition.

Methods: We analyzed semi-structured interviews with 24 such students using reflexive thematic analysis and interpreted them through an integrated lens of belonging uncertainty, minority stress, and transactional stress-coping models within a biopsychosocial framework. Four themes were generated: social stressors and belonging difficulties, including accent-based othering and withdrawal; academic and institutional stressors, including educational culture mismatch and help-seeking barriers; mental and physical health costs, including fear of failure, emotional exhaustion, and somatic symptoms; and mixed coping and support strategies.

Results: What distinguishes these accounts from generic student adjustment appears to be their configuration: difference attributed to nationality rather than to socioeconomic or regional background, legal contingency, cross-system educational discontinuity, and the absence of any administrative category through which support might be triggered. Because such students are invisible to provision keyed to international status, screening and belonging-based support should be indexed to adjustment need rather than enrollment category, and directed at institutional conduct as well as individual coping.

Conclusion: Hidden student mobility may constitute a distinct adjustment context in which substantial cross-border transition is obscured by domestic administrative status. Recognizing adjustment needs independently of formal enrolment categories may help institutions identify otherwise overlooked students and design more equitable, context-sensitive support.