Aguascalientes, Mexico - On a hot, bright evening in Aguascalientes - a peaceful city in central Mexico best known for its students and thriving car industry - Hazem Sharif and Zain Ali strolled through the leafy shade of the bar district.

Small crowds of young people from the city's universities had begun to gather around pizzas and craft beers, excitement in the air as they awaited the start of the Argentina-USA football game.

The two young men had other things on their minds, however.

They were on their way back from a Spanish class at the Universidad Panamericana, and were out to celebrate the approval of their student residency visas. Their relief at collecting their papers and card was palpable, marking the end of an uncertain - sometimes undocumented - phase in both of their lives, and the chance to begin making their home in Mexico.

"Zain has already learned to make quesadillas," says 24-year-old Hazem. The stocky oil and gas technician trainee fled to Sirte, Iraq, in 2014, to escape compulsory Syrian military service, the conflict having intensified to a point where students were no longer exempt.

"The problem is he only made three of them," Hazem jokes.

Zain - longer-haired, slighter of frame and with a background in speech and language therapy - laughs off the complaint.

"It was my first time cooking quesadillas," the 23-year-old shrugs. "I'd only been here a few days."
'I didn't want to shoot anyone'

It's been a long road for both students, who arrived in Mexico early last June to join a handful of young Syrians restarting their lives and studies in the Mexican city.

They were members of the Habesha Project - a Mexican NGO that relocates Syrian students to Mexico to continue their academic careers, interrupted by the conflict in Syria.

"As a Kurd, my options have always been limited," says Hazem, who is from al-Malikiyah in the mainly Kurdish Hasakah governorate of northern Syria.

"In Syria, we could never get government jobs or study certain majors in school."

Like many Kurds, Hazem describes the institutional discrimination he witnessed while living in Syria, which has led to many Kurds finding themselves torn during the conflict - with rebel forces seeking recruits from backgrounds presumed to have an instinctive animosity towards Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government while, on the other hand, military checkpoints were profiling racial minorities and imprisoning suspected dissidents and deserters.