libro v2-1.indd - ACADEMIA, programme européen d'échange de ...

Introduction
Several studies developed by international organisations 1 and political documents at a EU level 2
emphasise the importance for guidance and employment centres to have an international approach
in delivering their services. That means they should be able to offer job, education and guidance
opportunities not only at a national but also at a transnational level.
National societies have changed: people movements among countries have been increasing and we
do not speak only of the movement of students within EC programmes such as Socrates-Erasmus
or Leonardo da Vinci. Non-EU people move to other countries looking for jobs, for study reasons or
even for a better quality of life. A recent study of the OECD 3 says that in the last 20 years movements
of students from one country to another one have doubled and European countries receive most incoming
students in the world (however, out-migration of students is also significant in these countries).
The success of EU mobility programmes can be identified in the circuit of cultural exchanges that
sources out from these experiences as these programmes favour the knowledge of national contexts
which are near but different anyway, the comparison among methods and customs, etc.
Mobility, for educational, professional or other reasons, can be connected to:
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The socio-economic conditions of the countries and families of in-coming and out-going people;
The motivations which induce one person to study or work in a different country from his/her own;
The capacity/level of education and employment in the hosting country.
Thus, guidance practitioners involved in the education and labour sectors work within a very
heterogeneous context and have to answer to very different individual needs. Indeed, there are people
who can freely make their own choice to go abroad and spend some time studying or working in a
different country while other ones are increasingly obliged to leave their own country due to its sociopolitical
situation. Some people have financial difficulties whilst others are economically autonomous;
some people move within a “culturally shared area” while other people come from very distant cultural
traditions. Moreover, there are people going abroad with the idea to live there while others simply wish
to spend a short working or studying experience in the hosting country with the idea to come back to
their own country and reap the benefits of the experience back in their home country.
Such a phenomenon is increasing more and more and that obliges public institutions to develop the right
integration strategies of these people, thanks to specific politics giving access to training, studying,
working or guidance opportunities with a particular attention to those people (students or workers) that
are in disadvantaged conditions.
We can speak about the “mobility right”, especially in the educational field but not only there, that is
for example the need to guarantee to all students the opportunity to make any working or studying
experience abroad within specific programmes. It is an important right as those students spending
some time abroad become more competitive in the labour market when coming back and they acquire
important transferable competences which can be spent not only in the labour field but also more
generally in their social life.
Given this context, are guidance practitioners ready to face this situation and to answer to these users’
1
OECD (2004). Career Guidance and Public Policy - Bridging the Gap.
2
CEDEFOP (1998). Training for Changing Society - A Report on Current Vocational Education and Training Research in
Europe.
3
OECD (2004). Internationalisation and Trade in Higher Education. Opportunities and Challenges.
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