Mobile young individuals: subjective experiences of migration and return

Migration has been one of the distinctive features of the recent phase of youth employment in Europe (O’Reilly et al., 2015). Exacerbated levels of youth unemployment have led to greater attention being paid to the movement of young people within the EU (Burrell, 2011; Glorius et al., 2013; Holtslag et al., 2013) as significant numbers of young people living in countries that are severely affected by the economic crisis have moved abroad to find work. Freedom of movement and residence have been a cornerstone of the EU from the very beginning; indeed, they are enshrined in law: most recently in 2004 in what is known as the Free Movement or the Citizens’ Rights Directive 2004/38/EC. Since the EU’s Eastern enlargements of 2004 and 2007, several hundred thousand workers have moved from Central and Eastern Europe to Western European countries (Engbersen et al., 2013). When Europeans move from one place to another, we are typically speaking about short distances within their own nation state or home region. Eurostat figures on geographic mobility show that although 6.4 per cent of the EU-28 population changed their place of residency in the year prior to the census of 2011, only 0.6 per cent crossed borders in doing so (Eurostat, 2017a). For many Europeans, the move is only temporary; that is, an episode early in adult life and not a permanent condition. To understand the experiences and consequences of migration amongst young adults in Europe, it is not enough to ask: ‘how many?’ and ‘where?’. We also need to unravel the ‘why(s)?’, as well as what follows after a period of migration. Researchers often focus on objective factors like the difference in availability of jobs in the country left behind and the country to which the young person has migrated. This chapter considers instead how the migrating person thought and felt about taking this step and what