Using Cross-border Mobility in Vocational Education and Training in the Greater Region SaarLorLux

Abstract

In the course of the neoliberalization of the economy, the mobility of capital and goods along international value chains, and the interregional and international mobility of labour, have played increasingly prominent roles. As part of this trend, vocational education training (VET) mobility has become an important form of youth mobility, particularly considering its imaginative and concrete links to labour mobility. The prevalence of VET mobility between different labour markets and VET regions is, to a major degree, dependent on the distances and different economic profiles of the regions involved, and as discussed in previous chapters, personal dreams and aspirations also create imperatives to move abroad. Institutional (cultural and legal) differences also play a decisive role in the intensity of interregional and international VET mobility. But whereas there is a positive relationship between interregional economic and demographic differences in labour market regions and mobility, the relationships between spatial distances, and institutional/cultural differences of labour market regions and mobility are more negative. Therefore, the highest level of interregional VET mobility can be assumed to take place between neighbouring regions whose geographical distances as well as institutional and cultural differences are small, and demographic and economic differences are at the same time large.