Vol 2, No 2 (2011): EU Mobility
Europe is on the move! The word ‘mobility’ tends to bring a vivid image into people’s minds: the literal notion of movement through space. In this issue of Open Citizenship, we wanted to unpack the term and look at it from new angles. So in addition to exploring physical mobility – of students, workers and migrants, as well as impediments to the mobility of certain groups – we examine less conventional definitions of mobility, namely political mobility and the mobility of ideas.
Kristine Mitchell & Jillian Laux open ‘It’s Academic!’ by presenting the results of a pilot investigation into the effect of ERASMUS study abroad on students’ identification as a ‘European’. Catherine Wurth argues that the EU’s free movement policies for new Central and Eastern European Member States fails to meet the very needs of mobile workers that they are meant to assist and Eva Zschirnt examines the effects that mobile irregular immigrants have on their children in Germany.
In ‘Open Mic’, we are happy to present our own intern, Stéphanie Nowakowski, who shares her experiences of the ERASMUS and Leonardo da Vinci programmes.Meanwhile Rebecca Welge and Sebastian Kubitschko present a vision of political mobility where EU citizens are better able to influence political decision-making. Finally Lydia Medland presents an inside view of the Madrid protests from the very heart of ‘Plaza del Sol’.
We delve deeper into issues of educational, employment mobility, and get a youth perspective in ‘Teatime’ interviews. Pat Gibney from the European Employment Service talks about mobile workers in Ireland. Siru Korkala from the Centre for International Mobility (CIMO) discusses the growth of international education and the importance of educational mobility programmes in supporting this trend and finally Michał Braun talks about his experience on the Polish Youth Council during Poland’s EU presidency.
In ‘Movement Watch’, Young European Federalists (JEF), Fraternité 2020, The Unity Express, and European Disability Forum (EDF) present their projects and vision of a mobile Europe.
Finally, Shane O’Halloran teases out the mobility implications of Guerrilla social media marketing, María J. Martínez reviews Youth on the move, and Carsten Rehbein takes a look at Cosmopolitanism: Ideals, realities and Deficits in our ‘Critic’s Corner’.
Our goal remains to give everyone a voice, and we think you will enjoy the juxtaposition of different types of content that addresses the same theme of ‘Mobility’. For example, we examine educational mobility programmes through four lenses: an academic survey, a personal story, an interview of a programme administrator and a book review. We hope you will agree that such multi-faceted treatment really enriches our understanding of this complex topic. For this reason, we encourage you to jump around in this issue – be mobile! – and wish you enjoyable and fruitful read of Open Citizenship.
Academic
- ERASMUS and European identity, Kristine Mitchell, Jillian Laux
- Open borders policy or a quest for more control?, Catherine Wurth
- Is irregular migration a one-generation phenomenon? The case of Germany, Eva Zschirnt
Commentary
- ERASMUS and Leonardo: Before and after, Stéphanie Nowakowski
- Mobility and the quest(ion) of legitimacy, Rebecca Welge, Sebastian Kubitschko
- ‘If the sun fails us we’ll go to the moon’, Lydia Medland
Movement Watch
- Enthusiastic, open-minded and political, Young European Federalists (JEF)
- A united Europe at grassroots level, Fraternité 2020
- Freedom of movement campaign, European Disability Forum (EDF)
- The mobility of ideas, The Unity Express (TUE)
Review
- Guerrilla social media marketing, Shane O’Halloran
- Youth on the Move. European Youth and Geographical Mobility, Maria Martinez
- Cosmopolitanism. Ideals, Realities and Deficits, Carsten Rehbein