Extract

‘Mobility’ is all the rage in the academy too. Universities – in all corners of the globe – are busy scoping, planning and advertising mobility programmes, as an essential component of academics’ and students’ learning experience, whilst governments and regional bodies around the world are promoting mobility as crucial to learning in the new global economy. The world is on the move, and if it is not, it ought to be – at least if we take the policy rhetoric seriously.

(Robertson, 2010, p. 641)

An ever-booming field of study

Most volumes on academic and student mobility will start by reminding their readers that research on this phenomenon is scarce. In 2014 this assertion is not valid any longer. The last few years have witnessed an upsurge in the publication of volumes and journal issues on the topic (Gürüz, 2011; Brooks, Fuller & Waters, 2012; Erlich, 2012; Feyen & Krzaklewska, 2013; Kinginger, 2013; Huang, Finkelstein & Rostan, 2013; Machart & Dervin, 2014a; Van Mol, 2014; Gerhards Hans & Carlson, 2014, etc.). The Journal of International Mobility was set up in 2012 as well as a book series published with Peter Lang, entitled Education Beyond Borders. Since 2012 many conferences and seminars have taken place around the world: ICAMM 3 (organised by the editors of this volume in Malaysia in July 2012); a conference in French at the Université de Versailles-Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines in December 2012; Challenges of the International Mobility of the Highly Skilled in...