C pointer equivalents on other languages
In Java:

Instead of having a pointer to a struct that you allocate with malloc, you have a reference to an instance of a class that you instantiate with "new". (In Java, you cannot allocate memory for objects on the heap directly as you can in C/C++)
Primitives have no pointers, BUT there are libraries built into the main library for wrapping int,double, etc. in objects (Integer, Double).
As a undergraduate in CS, I started with C, where pointer is an important data type. Thereafter I touched on Java, JavaScript, PHP, Python. None of them have pointer per se.
So why? Do they have some equivalents in their languages that perform like pointer, or is the functionality of pointer not important anymore?
I roughly have some idea but I'd love to hear from more experienced programmers regarding this.