prof. Airi-Alina Allaste: What mobility means for young people and for the EU?

The mobility of young people for education, training and other purposes has been increasing globally. In the European Union, there are programs designed to create a sense of belonging to the idea of Europe and solidarity among Europeans. The freedom to move between different countries is one of the definitive features of life in the European Union, and that has led to investments totalling billions of euros into programmes designed to create better quality intra-European mobility, with a particular emphasis on the youth. The Erasmus+ framework can be viewed as a student mobility platform, but it is also becoming a means of teaching young people about what it means to be a citizen of Europe, and indeed the world, which constitutes a significant contribution to the Erasmus social agenda.

The presentation is based on the forthcoming collective monograph Mobility, Education and Employability in the European Union, which gives an inside view of Erasmus based on qualitative interviews with stakeholders and young people, conducted in Estonia, Germany, Italy, Poland and Portugal. In her speech, Airi-Alina Allaste will give an insight of the perspectives of policy makers and participating students.  The presentation will focus on young people involved in a youth exchange that contributes to active citizenship, one of the core youth policy objectives at the European level, and analyse how young people perceive the influence of their mobility experiences on citizenship standpoints and practices.