Mobility exchanges and the 'experience' of learning on the move

The chapter begins from an acknowledgment of the porous boundaries between formal and non-formal education. Such opportunities are supported across the European Union (EU) through supranational institutional arrangements that encourage young people to engage in non-formal education, promoting it as a gateway to active citizenship. We seek to investigate the particular configurations of learning that become possible when young people undertake mobility exchanges. Despite the general risk of incurring additional hardship, when “on the move,” learning is usually reported as being faster (because it is “compacted”), wide ranging, and motivating. One reason this topic has attracted scholarly attention in recent years, and could now be described as a preoccupation, lies with the new, post-pandemic limits imposed on mobility. Drawing on the work of the Italian sociologist Paolo Jedlowski (Il sapere dell’esperienza. Il Saggiatore, Milan, 1994) – who in turn borrows from German philosophy – this chapter uses the distinction between “Erfahrung” and “Erlebnis,” both translatable into “experience,” to discuss varieties of learning on the move. By “Erfahrung,” we signify the cultivation of experience, based on active engagement and the knowledge that derives from it; by “Erlebnis,” we refer to “lived experience,” or the way we feel in any given situation in the present. Undertaking mobility encompasses both of these, but precisely because it implies interacting with new sites – specifically, new sites of learning – the resulting configuration of learning is particularly interesting. The chapter exemplifies these notions by discussing empirical material collected for a large, ongoing research project investigating the futures of young people in Italy (“Mapping Youth Futures”).