A work of synthesis on European student mobility, Valérie Erlich’s book raises the question of higher education as a vector of European integration and indirectly takes stock of intra-European relations and of Europe with the rest of the world.
A work of synthesis on European student mobility, Valérie Erlich’s book raises the question of higher education as a vector of European integration and indirectly takes stock of intra-European relations and of Europe with the rest of the world.
Valérie Erlich’s work presents itself as a synthesis of the work carried out on European student mobility, the plural highlighting the diversity of existing forms of mobility and their challenges. The approach is intended to be resolutely multidisciplinary, from sociology to economics, including psychology and even geography. But the author immediately underlines the difficulty of obtaining reliable data, harmonized at European level, and clearly differentiating mobile students from the rest of the students.
Reading this work is underpinned by numerous questions. First of all, it is the question of the form taken by European construction that arises. Is higher education, can it be, a vector of European integration? ? Because between clearly stated European objectives and the real situation of member countries, considerable divergences appear, and even strengthen with the emergence of the European Higher Education Area (HEIs). Is there, today, a real European policy regarding the internationalization of higher education, or are the growing international issues leading to divergent strategies on the part of States, local authorities and establishments? , that student mobility allows us to highlight ? Do the strategies of individuals correspond to those implemented by States? ? Here are some approaches to structuring the reading of this book.
A history of globalized Higher Education
The study is structured in three parts ; the first presents a history of the appearance of new terms specific to globalized Higher Education – evaluation, quality assurance, student employability in particular – through the major stages of the construction of European higher education policies. Institutionalized mobility policies are now well established, in particular through programs like Erasmus ; they lead as much to the development of student mobility as to the progressive convergence of training. At the time of the first assessment of the Bologna process, we see that the system LMD is a reality in most European countries today. However, a problem seems to emerge: “ How to reconcile democratic access to knowledge and production of the skills required by the economy at a controlled budgetary cost ? » (p.50).
Policies supporting mobility would thus have led to a commodification of education, diverging from the European humanist tradition, the importance of which the author takes care to recall. She concludes that there exists today a real “ globalized market » of higher education, in which students would progress along very different paths, depending on the challenges of their mobility. For many, “ the idea of a cultural experience as a central element of the exchange is replaced by the obtaining of useful knowledge for the new industrialized » (p.62).
Furthermore, if the room for maneuver of States seems to be reduced in this area in favor of supranational policies, the author’s analysis also shows that national strategies are in reality very differentiated, in particular due to globally established strategies. increasingly autonomous. The limits of programs like Erasmus thus emerge, due to the circumvention strategies of certain establishments, attempting to deviate from the principle of reciprocity. perfect ”, which is in reality almost never guaranteed. Two logics are opposed in terms of welcoming foreign students, corresponding to two meanings of the foreign student in itself: a rather humanist logic linked to development aid, by welcoming students from emerging countries or the South in an approach to transmitting knowledge, and a logic more “ merchant » of capturing the elites of the countries of origin.
Composite statistics and inequalities in access to mobility
The second part of the work adopts a more statistical approach, distinguishing all the factors likely to structure the analysis of student mobility, and to explain the inequalities perceptible within the populations concerned.
The very definition of “ mobile student » is problematic, which leads to difficulty in obtaining reliable and truly comparable data at a European level. The approaches are then very diversified: student mobility is approached from the angle of countries of origin, countries of destination, the most represented sectors, etc. But the average mobility rate in Europe remains limited (2.2% in theEU), and the increase in volume observed since the 1990s follows the increase in the student population as a whole.
The author then focuses on the vectors of inequality of access to mobility. A prioriaccording to the studies cited, a link exists between social origin and mobility: the “ migratory capital » of students, in other words their ability to plan for mobility, is strongly influenced by social capital, via different channels (social networks, mobility habit ”, language skills in particular). The reproduction of social inequalities in student mobility therefore seems proven, although social factors are not sufficient to explain all of the inequalities observed.
In addition to these statistical observations, there are more individual, qualitative considerations: each mobility is anchored in a different life course. The author thus takes up the notion of “ mobility capital ”, which includes four factors: personal history, previous mobility experiences and language skills, adaptation experiences and certain personality traits of the student (p.125). This “ mobility capital » is strongly influenced by academic, cultural and social capital but is not limited to it. From the study of multiple works with sometimes divergent conclusions, the author recognizes the difficulty of establishing general findings. But the constants identified by these studies should in the future make it possible to “ consider constructing a framework for analyzing the lived experience of students that would be of general scope “.
Finally, the author carries out a comparative study of mobility financing systems, which mainly contradict the principle of equality regarding registration fees and tuition fees established by European jurisprudence. Glaring inequalities exist in reality, between the different categories of students on the one hand, and between universities renowned for quality and those struggling to defend their attractiveness on the other hand, due to various national and/or local circumvention mechanisms. .
Individual journeys and European culture
In a third part, V. Erlich focuses on the profile of “ student travelers », and the role of mobility in their personal, student and professional lives. The challenges of mobility, and therefore the motivation of students in this regard, can differ radically depending on the social environment or region of origin. For students of “ South » or emerging countries, mobility is often one of the only ways to pursue studies and obtain a recognized diploma ; for students of “ North “, mobility rather represents a cultural and linguistic experience, of the order of “ bonuses “. Other typologies can be established, for example on the behavior of mobile students in the face of cultural difference (p. 169), which do not necessarily overlap with the previous categories, but depend on geographical origins, type of mobility, etc.
The author also underlines that, paradoxically, few studies are interested in the relationship to the studies of mobile students, nor in their living conditions, even though we know that the costs linked to the exchange, for example, constitute the major obstacle to student mobility. This aspect is often only addressed through the prism of satisfaction surveys, even though study and living conditions are among the major points of competition between education systems. Finally, the contribution of mobility to the “ employability » of the students is mixed. Few studies actually demonstrate a “ added value » clear and lasting regarding entry into the labor market.
But whatever the angle of approach, studies show the diversity of attitudes of mobile students, towards the host country or even within the expatriate group, calling into question the possibility of emergence of a European culture via this type of exchange. Few students refer to a European culture felt on this occasion, but rather to a culture that has become “ binational » with the exchange. If the Erasmus experience, for example, is akin to a Bildung contemporary, as V. Cichelli points out (p. 162), this only integrates the European dimension in a roundabout way, via more or less openness to another national culture, or via assimilation to a “ Erasmus culture » independent, in a closed cocoon. There is therefore no real feeling of belonging to a common European culture and territory.
It is therefore indirectly a state of intra-European relations and of Europe with the rest of the world, through the prism of student mobility in higher education, that V. Erlich’s work draws up. If student mobility reveals the growing internationalization of Higher Education and the structural convergence of training, relations between States are far from always being equal, and strong differentiations persist.
Finally, the issues raised by the book are for some at the heart of the current political debate. We think, for example, of the prospects for financing student mobility in the future, which echo the discussions relating to the new program “ Erasmus for all “. We also think of the linguistic issues, addressed in different chapters of the work, but which would undoubtedly deserve a study in their own right, as the debate is so virulent today in France. European comparisons tell us, for example, that many university systems have already fully integrated English into some of their courses (p.50), as part of an attractiveness strategy. The linguistic dimension is thus one of the major factors in the choice of destination for students.