Youth and mobility: Crossroads and emerging issues

Abstract

Cross-border geographical mobility in young adulthood is often seen as a process which opens up new perspectives and allows for alternative modes of social positioning and identification, of development and relating to others. Young people are meant to search for new places and social spaces to develop and unfold. While the definition of “youth” (Luedtke, 2016) and the parameters of “mobility” (Cohen & Sirkeci, 2011) continue to be fluid and often contested, as a component of social justice and public policy, the focus on young mobiles in relation to education, training, housing, health, and employment are of particular interest in how youth are shaping their futures and the new societies they are residing in, while others are indeed not mobile. In this sense, mobility understood as movement in geographical space is not independent of social status and social mobility. Reasons for being mobile during youth can be manifold such as studying or doing voluntary work abroad, being on a student exchange, or for employment and entrepreneurial activities. In the European Union (EU), youth mobility policies have been one of the most important objectives that EU institutions have promoted in the past decade. Many programs such as Erasmus or the European Voluntary Service are meant to offer young people opportunities to move abroad. At the same time, the EU is not devoid of geographical, regional, and socio-economic inequalities (Amelina & Vasilache, 2014). As a result, critical events such as economic crises, high unemployment, and/or socioeconomic inequality between countries also foster youth mobility. Specifically amongst this constellation of social, political, and economic crises challenging and shaping European societies, the region has recently experienced one of the most significant influxes of migrants and refugees in its history. In this context, it is indeed difficult to compartmentalize youth mobiles as a general population given the inherent diversity of their ages, genders, race, ethnic and family backgrounds, status, class, socio-economic and regional origin, sexuality, dis/ability, aspirations, etc. Given such complexity of diversities involved in the discussion of youth mobiles, by extension, the specific issues, challenges, and policy implications arising from their mobilities and processes of settlement in new destinations undoubtedly vary vastly.