Abstract
In this chapter we take an in-depth look at one of the main theoretical constructs underpinning the Erasmus programme: the idea of ‘employability’. Taking a sociologically informed view, we define ‘employability’ as a form of reflexivity to be practiced during the transition from tertiary education to the labour market. Understanding employability involves appreciating the need to link potential employees and employers, with educators and trainers providing a crucial meditative role in this relationship. Erasmus provides a pedagogical habitus within which this form of reflexivity is imaginatively conjoined with intra-European mobility. The idea is to make students capable of working across national boundaries, acquiring the capacity to engage in transnational circulation and establish professional relationships that traverse national fields, including the development of pragmatic skills, such as foreign language fluency, and an appreciation of cultural diversity.
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Notes
- 1.
This position is ably demonstrated by the online Cambridge dictionary which boldly declares that ‘employability’ is ‘the skills and abilities that allow you to be employed,’ without elaboration. See http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/employability
- 2.
The Erasmus Programme Guide does not actually provide a definition but recognises that employability involves making links between graduates and the labour market (European Commission 2017, p. 150).
- 3.
In practice, research with students planning to undertake outward mobility for work and study reveals that other environs such as peer and family networks may actually function more efficaciously as mobility habitus , particularly were parents or siblings have prior experience of living in different countries (Cairns et al. 2013).
- 4.
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Cairns, D., Krzaklewska, E., Cuzzocrea, V., Allaste, AA. (2018). Erasmus and Employability. In: Mobility, Education and Employability in the European Union. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76926-4_2
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