La mobilità degli studenti Erasmus: identità europea e nuova migrazione

[Autom. eng. transl.] Thirty years after the launch of the European Erasmus programme, the contribution focuses on the dynamics and destinations of the students who participated. The article starts from the analysis of student mobility linked to the European scheme, highlighting how this has become on the one hand a structural part of the tertiary education of thousands of European students and on the other one of the significant components of the intra-European mobility of the population of Union. Since 1987, over three million students, trainees and teachers have moved between European universities, with significant differences between Member States, creating what the European Commission itself has defined as «the example of cooperation and intercultural exchange between the Member States of greatest success since the treaties of Rome". There is no doubt that this program has represented, and continues to do so in its renewed Erasmus+ guise, a model for the promotion of European identity and the acquisition of linguistic, social and cultural skills of the host countries. At the same time, in particular for students from Mediterranean countries, the scheme has also ended up representing a springboard for emigration towards markets capable of absorbing their job offer. The networks of relationships and the skills acquired during the study stay have proven to be, as documented in many recent studies and investigations, an indispensable and enabling emigration following the end of studies.