Who Goes Abroad?

Abstract

Despite the fact that more than two million European students participated in the Erasmus programme, the drivers and barriers of this intra-European mobility flow have only recently caught the (empirical) interest of the scholarly community. Until recently, the focus of most educational mobility studies was mainly on the outcomes of students’ participation (Salisbury et al. 2010). Even though some progress has been made over the last few years, most of the studies on the drivers and barriers of student mobility tend to consider students as rational actors, taking decisions in an independent way (Carlson 2013; Findlay 2011). However, as the academic literature on international migration and international student migration shows, personal ambitions are just one aspect of the migration decision (see for example Carlson 2013; Findlay 2011; Sánchez et al. 2006; Waters 2006). After all, individuals’ migratory decisions are influenced by a multitude of factors, such as: the capabilities of the person involved, the perceptions of the place of destination and origin and the encompassing meso and macro context (Timmerman et al. 2011). In this chapter, I argue that — comparable to migration decisions — the decision to study abroad or to remain at home should be situated within the broader economic, cultural and social environments wherein these decisions are formed.