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Introducing Youth Mobility and Migration

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Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to introduce some of the conceptual tools researchers have developed to help explain young people’s spatial movement, especially in education, work and training contexts. This includes a reappraisal of the relationship between mobility and migration, seeing them as nested practices rather than distinct. The chapters also discuss how mobility is imaginatively integrated into life planning, with moving abroad while young potentially initiating a migration trajectory. This work is, we hope, an appropriate starting point for this book in establishing a starting point for mobility and arguing that what happens in the youth phase has lasting value.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The idea that migration consists of nested mobility episodes that start in the youth phase of the life course is explored further in Chap. 3 of this book (Cairns 2021a).

  2. 2.

    Mobility decision-making is elaborated upon in Chap. 4 (Cairns 2021b), building on perspectives developed in our previous work (see, e.g. Cairns et al. 2017).

  3. 3.

    This is also an issue that is widely recognized in youth mobility policies, most visibly in the EU supported Erasmus+ programme, which has emphasised the importance of ‘learning mobility,’ not only in the sense of learning about mobility opportunities but also how to take advantage of them.

  4. 4.

    For an earlier discussion of the relationship between youth mobility predispositions and habitus, see Cairns et al. (2013).

  5. 5.

    This is in fact a long-standing theme in youth mobility research. See, for instance, King and Ruiz-Gelices (2003) or Skrbis et al. (2014).

  6. 6.

    For a more in-depth account of having ‘fun’ during mobility, see Krzaklewska (2019).

  7. 7.

    This idea points towards looking at mobility decisions as being oriented around choosing ‘a life’ rather than just subscribing to a lifestyle (Cairns 2014: 28).

  8. 8.

    These intercultural environments have been conceptualized as learning ‘bubble’ environments by Cuzzocrea et al. (2021).

References

  • Cairns, D. (2014). Youth transitions, international student mobility and spatial reflexivity: Being mobile? Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

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  • Cairns, D. (2021a). Mobility becoming migration: Understanding youth spatiality in the twenty-first century. In D. Cairns (Ed.), The Palgrave handbook of youth mobility and educational migration. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

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  • Cairns, D. (2021b). Migration decision-making, mobility capital and reflexive learning. In D. Cairns (Ed.), The Palgrave handbook of youth mobility and educational migration. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

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  • Cairns, D., Growiec, K., & Smyth, J. (2013). Leaving Northern Ireland: The youth mobility field, habitus and recession among undergraduates in Belfast. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 34(4), 544–562.

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  • Cairns, D., Cuzzocrea, V., Briggs, D., & Veloso, L. (2017). The consequences of mobility: Reflexivity, social inequality and the reproduction of precariousness in highly qualified migration. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

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  • Cuzzocrea, V., Krzaklewska, E., & Cairns, D. (2021). ‘There is no me, there is only us’: The Erasmus bubble as a transient form of transnational collectivity. In V. Cuzzocrea, B. Gook, & B. Schiermer (Eds.), Forms of collective engagements in youth transition: A global perspective. Brill: Leiden.

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  • King, R., & Ruiz-Gelices, E. (2003). International student migration and the European ‘year abroad:’ Effects on European identity and subsequent migration behaviour. International Journal of Population Geography, 9(3), 229–252.

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  • Krzaklewska, E. (2019). Youth, mobility and generations – the meanings and impact of migration and mobility experiences on transitions to adulthood. Studia Migracyjne – Przegląd Polonijny, 1(171), 41–59.

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  • Skrbis, Z., Woodward, I., & Bean, C. (2014). Seeds of cosmopolitan future? Young people and their aspirations for future mobility. Journal of Youth Studies, 17(5), 614–625.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. ISCTE – Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), Centro de Investigação e Estudos de Sociologia, Lisbon, Portugal

    David Cairns

  2. University of Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy

    Valentina Cuzzocrea

  3. Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland

    Ewa Krzaklewska

Authors
  1. David Cairns
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  2. Valentina Cuzzocrea
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  3. Ewa Krzaklewska
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to David Cairns .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. ISCTE – Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), Centro de Investigação e Estudos de Sociologia, Lisbon, Portugal

    David Cairns

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Cairns, D., Cuzzocrea, V., Krzaklewska, E. (2022). Introducing Youth Mobility and Migration. In: Cairns, D. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Youth Mobility and Educational Migration . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99447-1_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99447-1_2

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-99446-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-99447-1

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

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