Content and Objectives

Today, pupils, trainees and students make up a major share of migrators between highly developed states. This trend of growing mobility among the young, often highly skilled population is assessed quite ambivalently by policy-makers and academics. On the one hand, criticism has been raised by those who see a loss in human capital from the international migration of these population groups. On the other hand, stays abroad have become an important criterion for labour market recruiting in the context of globalisation and transnationalism.

The personal consequences of this new form of migration for individual occupational groups has been analysed, but sound scientific studies of how a stay abroad for educational purposes affects one’s entire life have not been conducted. We assume that migration experiences during people’s teen and young adult years not only affect implementation of additional educational experience or qualifications in the course of a career, but also other spheres of life such as friend and family networks, the choice of mates and intimate relationships, later mobility behaviour or political attitudes. In addition to personal consequences, the social consequences of educational mobility also play a role. This gives rise to the question of whether educational mobility is becoming a new dimension of social inequality due to the fact that these persons have access to resources that others do not.