In 2012, the ERASMUS programme celebrated its 25th anniversary. As one of the best-known initiatives of the EU, it has already enabled almost three million students to spend a part of their studies abroad. But ERASMUS is more than just a simple academic exchange programme: designed to contribute to the creation of a «People’s Europe», it has become a successful political instrument for shaping generations of European students. This interdisciplinary volume attempts to explain the fascination behind ERASMUS. The authors examine the role of student mobility within the European integration process and judge its impact on how young citizens identify with Europe. Is there a «Generation ERASMUS», and what characteristics does it have? Can ERASMUS serve as a symbol for «new» Europeans?

Drawing on an extensive study with young individuals who migrated to Singapore and Tokyo in the 2010s, this book sheds light on the friendships, emotions, hopes and fears involved in establishing life as Europeans in Asia. It demonstrates how migration to Asian business centres has become a way of distinction and an alternative route of middle-class reproduction for young Europeans during that period. The perceived insecurities of life in the crisis-ridden EU result in these migrants' onward migration or prolonged stays in Asia. Capturing the changing roles of Singapore and Japan as migration destinations, this pioneering work makes the case for EU citizens' aspired lifestyles and professional employment that is no longer only attainable in Europe or the West.

Digital Diversities is a groundbreaking interdisciplinary study of the social, social-psychological, philosophical and political ramifications of the ‘digital turn’ in human affairs. Focusing, in particular, on connections between the saturation of everyday life by digital communication technologies and 21st century global mobility, it offers fresh and original accounts of the interface between online communication practices and the negotiation of increasingly complex social experience. It provides critical studies of, among other things, the consequences of the widespread shift to remote rather than embodied relationships, the day-to-day management of intercultural encounters in unprecedentedly diverse social settings, new and emerging forms of political expression and cultural diplomacy, and the relationship between posthuman ideology and the ‘googleisation of everything’. As such, Digital Diversities is a collection that makes a timely and thought-provoking contribution to the expanding field of studies of the abrupt, and still poorly understood, transformation of everyday life in the early 21st century by the gadgets and communication platforms of the digital global hive.

This book takes an in-depth look at the European Commission’s Erasmus programme. In its current Erasmus+ format, the programme supports international exchange visits among students, trainees, volunteers and academic members of staff with a view to enhancing employability and encouraging intercultural understanding. Against the backdrop of the 30th anniversary of Erasmus, the authors explore the successes of the programme, most prominently the undergraduate exchange programme, as well as areas of on-going development, including the incorporation of short duration mobility projects focused on specific social issues into the initiative. Through integrating perspectives from authors in a number of European countries, all of whom have knowledge regarding various aspects of Erasmus, the book provides insight into the challenges facing the programme as it moves into its fourth decade. Mobility, Education and Employability in the European Union: Inside Erasmus will be of interest to students and scholars from a range of disciplines, including geography, sociology and European politics.

With Brexit looming, a major issue facing UK Higher Education is whether the UK will be able to stay in the Erasmus Programme. This book sits at the intersection of three main interrelated themes - EU citizenship, the current state of the university in Europe, and student mobility - as they play out in the context of an EU funded programme established not least to promote European identity, European consciousness and European citizenship. Exploring through interviews with students from many countries, this book weaves together the themes of citizenship creation as a device for building a nation and a polity, the university as a public space in the era of the marketization of higher education, and communicative interaction as the mechanism by which citizenship is created. Ultimately it asks if the building bricks of national citizenship can be transposed to the transnational scale, and assist in creating the transnational, EU citizenship. It finds, surprisingly, that far from encouraging and facilitating the communicative interaction on which the development of EU citizenship was postulated, central features of the Erasmus Programme inadvertently work against this outcome. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of EU law and European and EU studies, Citizenship Studies, sociology, and more broadly to higher education in general.

This prescient Research Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of the challenges that young people from across the globe face as they navigate the transition from adolescence to adulthood.

This handbook provides an overview of developments in the youth mobility and migration research field, with specific emphasis on movement for education, work and training purposes, encompassing exchanges sponsored by institutions, governments and international agencies, and free movement. The collection features over 30 theoretically and empirically-based discussions of the meaning and key aspects of various forms of mobility as practiced in contemporary societies, and concludes with an exploration of the costs and benefits of moving abroad to individuals and societies at a time when the viability of free circulation is being called into question. The geographical scope of the book covers Europe, Asia, Australia and the Americas, and takes into account socio-economic and regional inequalities, as well as recent developments such as the refugee crisis, Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic. The book integrates the fields of youth mobility and migration studies, creating opportunities for the establishment of a new paradigm for understanding the spatial circulation of youth and young adults in the twenty-first century.