Introduction

Abstract

International student mobility has increased significantly in recent decades. Globally, it has been estimated that numbers of students that move internationally ‘have been rising almost four times faster than total international migration’ (King and Raghuram 2013: 127). Whereas in 1975, around 0.8 million students were enrolled outside their country of citizenship, in 2010 this number increased to more than 4.1 million students (OECD 2012: 362). Degree mobility — students pursuing a complete degree abroad, also called ‘diploma mobility’ — constitutes the majority of student migrants globally. Nevertheless, in Europe, credit mobility — students going abroad for a limited period of time in the framework of an exchange programme — is the prevailing form (Brooks and Waters 2011). This is principally the result of the institutionalisation of the Erasmus programme: between 1987 and 2011, 2.3 million students moved internationally within the framework of this programme.1 Even though an increasing interest in credit mobility can be observed in scientific circles (Findlay et al. 2012), the majority of studies focus on degree mobility, especially from ‘non-Western’ towards ‘Western’ countries (Shigemasu and Ikeda 2006; Smith and Khawaja 2011; Waters and Brooks 2011). Given the increasing visibility and growth of participating student numbers in the Erasmus programme, this is somewhat surprising.