Twentieth International Conference on Diversity in Organizations, Communities & Nations

Abstract

Societal changes, an altered labour market, skill shortages, and structural adjustments towards an adequate assessment of competences and efficient direction of labor power turn out to be very demanding for Europe. The EU-Commission (re)acts with a continuous investment of human and financial resources for strategies towards academic mobility and the recognition of educational performances within all member states to promote economic growth and individual life satisfaction as a return of social and spatial mobility. This cross-sectional empirical study investigates if EU endeavors towards an explicitly pronounced education-mobility nexus are coherent on macro and micro level. With reference to qualified migrants it therefore questions in how far individuals consider a) mobility a condition for the access to enhanced educational opportunities or b) vice versa: educational structures/ institutions to have a share in social and geographical ‘flexibility’? This question becomes particularly interesting when firstly, considering the social morphology of the qualified migrant that has significantly changed in a post-1989 Europe (Scott 2002). Secondly, by drawing on the studied interrelation of family agency on migration and putting education as key indicator in context of strategies to attract qualified foreign labor force and to manage diversity on macro level. Thirdly, by putting the lenses on the most prominent European migrant group in Italy, and consequently to the demand of work force triggered by Romanian entrepreneurs who invested in their destination region/ country, built up their own business and contribute to the development of new skill profiles among the labouring population.