Education policy: internal consolidator or foreign policy vehicle? EU and Canadian perspectives compared.

Education has emerged as an increasingly rewarding, but highly ambiguous form of foreign policy. Shifting from a domestic dynamic, constructed via internal processes for reasons of national self-identity, the internationalization of education has emerged as one of the most salient trends in higher education across the globe (CBIE 2011, 3), and become a clear component in the foreign policies of states and institutions alike. While scholarly investigation into foreign policy and education have in and of themselves remained popular areas of interest within the political and social sciences, exploring ways in which education is operating as a vehicle of twenty-first century foreign policy, as well as looking at how foreign policy content and ambitions are beginning to impact on the substance and structure of higher education is a relatively new field. This paper explores the role of contemporary higher education in European Union, and Canadian foreign policy terrains

Emerging European geographies: the Erasmus program and Its effect on the east-west divide in a time of economic crisis

This chapter examines the conceptual assumptions that underlie Erasmus: the EU’s most successful student mobility scheme. Originally designed to inspire a new ‘geography of European youth’, Erasmus provides ambiguous outcomes in terms of generating a deepened sense of European identity. A European youth demographic clearly exists, but its ability to support European integration through specific dynamics of identity, association, and skill generation have been undermined internally by a lack of clarity regarding the current purpose of Erasmus, and externally by the upheavals of enlargement and the Eurozone crisis

Vocation or vocational? Reviewing European Union education and mobility structures

This article examines the role that education plays in European Union (EU) integration. We ask whether efforts which historically have been designed to endow European students with a ‘knowledge of Europe’ in terms of an understanding of culture, politics and sensibility have been circumscribed by, or augmented, by the recently inaugurated Europe of Knowledge project. We argue that the renowned Erasmus mobility programme, a flagship of European higher education innovation, may, in light of critical challenges to the Eurozone and the EU project, be recasting itself along its initial 1987 objectives: enhancing a sense of European identity amongst participating exchange students while endowing them with transferrable skills designed to strengthen current weaknesses in the European internal market. We suggest that the initial, integration-fostering, identity-building goals of Erasmus concomitant with ‘growing a Union’, have since 2009 and in the continuation of the Eurozone financial crisis, been progressively replaced by the acquisition of transferable skills necessary to boost employability and drive economic recovery through enhanced labour mobility. As the majority of European labour markets struggle to regain their momentum, we question whether European students participating in the Erasmus programme emerge as merely ‘skilled’ rather than ‘schooled’ in a wider knowledge of Europe intended by the programme’s founders. Surveying students regarding their perceptions of European and national identities, this article concludes that education through mobility remains a highly significant and viable means of constructing and reconstructing identity and European integration, even in a time of economic crisis

Emerging European geographies: the Erasmus program and Its effect on the east-west divide in a time of economic crisis

This chapter examines the conceptual assumptions that underlie Erasmus: the EU's most successful student mobility scheme. Originally designed to inspire a new 'geography of European youth', Erasmus provides ambiguous outcomes in terms of generating a deepened sense of European identity. A European youth demographic clearly exists, but its ability to support European integration through specific dynamics of identity, association, and skill generation have been undermined internally by a lack of clarity regarding the current purpose of Erasmus, and externally by the upheavals of enlargement and the Eurozone crisis

Vocation or vocational? Reviewing European Union education and mobility structures

This article examines the role that education plays in European Union (EU) integration. We ask whether efforts which historically have been designed to endow European students with a ?knowledge of Europe? in terms of an understanding of culture, politics and sensibility have been circumscribed by, or augmented, by the recently inaugurated Europe of Knowledge project. We argue that the renowned Erasmus mobility programme, a flagship of European higher education innovation, may, in light of critical challenges to the Eurozone and the EU project, be recasting itself along its initial 1987 objectives: enhancing a sense of European identity amongst participating exchange students while endowing them with transferrable skills designed to strengthen current weaknesses in the European internal market. We suggest that the initial, integration-fostering, identity-building goals of Erasmus concomitant with ?growing a Union?, have since 2009 and in the continuation of the Eurozone financial crisis, been progressively replaced by the acquisition of transferable skills necessary to boost employability and drive economic recovery through enhanced labour mobility. As the majority of European labour markets struggle to regain their momentum, we question whether European students participating in the Erasmus programme emerge as merely ?skilled? rather than ?schooled? in a wider knowledge of Europe intended by the programme?s founders. Surveying students regarding their perceptions of European and national identities, this article concludes that education through mobility remains a highly significant and viable means of constructing and reconstructing identity and European integration, even in a time of economic crisis

Education policy: internal consolidator or foreign policy vehicle? EU and Canadian perspectives compared.

Education has emerged as an increasingly rewarding, but highly ambiguous form of foreign policy. Shifting from a domestic dynamic, constructed via internal processes for reasons of national self-identity, the internationalization of education has emerged as one of the most salient trends in higher education across the globe (CBIE 2011, 3), and become a clear component in the foreign policies of states and institutions alike. While scholarly investigation into foreign policy and education have in and of themselves remained popular areas of interest within the political and social sciences, exploring ways in which education is operating as a vehicle of twenty-first century foreign policy, as well as looking at how foreign policy content and ambitions are beginning to impact on the substance and structure of higher education is a relatively new field. This paper explores the role of contemporary higher education in European Union, and Canadian foreign policy terrains

Vocation or vocational? Reviewing European Union education and mobility structures

This article examines the role that education plays in European Union (EU) integration. We ask whether efforts which historically have been designed to endow European students with a ?knowledge of Europe? in terms of an understanding of culture, politics and sensibility have been circumscribed by, or augmented, by the recently inaugurated Europe of Knowledge project. We argue that the renowned Erasmus mobility programme, a flagship of European higher education innovation, may, in light of critical challenges to the Eurozone and the EU project, be recasting itself along its initial 1987 objectives: enhancing a sense of European identity amongst participating exchange students while endowing them with transferrable skills designed to strengthen current weaknesses in the European internal market. We suggest that the initial, integration-fostering, identity-building goals of Erasmus concomitant with ?growing a Union?, have since 2009 and in the continuation of the Eurozone financial crisis, been progressively replaced by the acquisition of transferable skills necessary to boost employability and drive economic recovery through enhanced labour mobility. As the majority of European labour markets struggle to regain their momentum, we question whether European students participating in the Erasmus programme emerge as merely ?skilled? rather than ?schooled? in a wider knowledge of Europe intended by the programme?s founders. Surveying students regarding their perceptions of European and national identities, this article concludes that education through mobility remains a highly significant and viable means of constructing and reconstructing identity and European integration, even in a time of economic crisis