Mobility Within Mainland Europe

Abstract

Unlike educational mobility in most other parts of the world, the movement of students within Europe tends to be for relatively short periods of time and is stimulated strongly by regional policy, made by the European Union. Although students do migrate under their own initiative and outside of formal programmes, the vast majority move under the auspices of the ‘Erasmus’ scheme, founded in 1987, which provides funding for students to spend part of their degree programme at an institution in another EU Member State. Indeed, it has been suggested that programmes to promote the mobility of students within Europe have been the most successful component of EU policy to date (Papatsiba, 2006; Recchi, 2006). Whether or not this is the case, it is certainly true that such initiatives have consumed considerable attention from policymakers since the mid-1980s and have been given renewed vigour since the late 1990s under the terms of the Bologna Process. This policy context is explored in the first part of the chapter. Drawing on some of the arguments made in Chapter 2, we consider the various schemes that have been put in place by the European Union to encourage student mobility, and the objectives which underpin them.