Perspectives and discourses on student mobility and interculturality

Although nearly two decades ago Coleman (1998) claimed that European research on Study Abroad (SA) had had interculturality as a central concern for some time, our impression is that interest in the link between SA and interculturality has been increasing recently, and is now shared well beyond Europe. This domain of investigation - whose boundaries are by no means well-defined - is varied also in terms of perspectives and discourses, as it catalyses different motivations and expectations on the part of the various stakeholders, be they international political organisations, educational institutions or the students themselves. In this publication we have therefore striven to gather some of these voices, with contributions on topics such as the features, dynamics, advantages and shortcomings of student mobility in terms of the relationship between study abroad and young people’s intercultural learning, but also how best to prepare the students so that they make the most of their experiences. Our aim has also been allow the perspectives of the different actors involved in higher education mobility programmes to emerge: not only those of researchers, but also of academic staff, of mobility programs administrators and, of course, of the students themselves. The present special issue comes at the end of the three-year European project IEREST (Intercultural Education Resources for Erasmus Students and their Teachers) co-funded by the European Commission within the frame of the Lifelong Learning Programme 2009-2012 (IEREST, 2015). The project produced a set of teaching modules to be taught before, during and after study abroad, in order to guide students to take advantage their first-hand experiences abroad in terms of intercultural and personal development. Some of the contributors to this issue were directly involved in the project, while others manifested their interest during its lifecycle. Although the project was aimed at Erasmus students, we have not limited the category of students involved in the studies reported here to this particular European programme or to other within-degree mobility programmes.