Youth Employment Mobility – experiencing (un)certainties in Europe
Taking the risk-choice-freedom-paradox as theoretical starting point and drawing on empirical research from the international HORIZON 2020 research project on youth mobility – MOVE – we scrutinise young people’s general international mobility experiences and, specifically, the interrelatedness of risks, choices and freedom under mobility.
Main content
Mobility in general, and young people’s international mobility in particular, has become a popular topic throughout the last 20 years. Many positive aspects are attributed to it, for example increase in young people’s income, health and education prospects and in individual freedom.
Mobility options to choose have never been so complex, multifaceted and open as they are today. Youth today – especially in the industrialised countries of the Northern hemisphere – enjoy open and permeable national borders, can travel around the globe, have more international educational and employment options as well as lifestyle and partner choice options than ever before. Mobility opportunities provide, on one hand, options to choose between alternatives against the background of ones preferences, help to transform choices into mobility practices and thus foster social (networks, relations) and structural (educational and labour market) integration. However, international mobilities also imply uncertainties and insecurities regarding the perception and choice of life-course related appropriate options, regarding the predictability of outcomes and life-course related unintended consequences of it.
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