Who Gets to Move? Educational Mobility and Unequal Pathways to Europe

We talk about mobility as if it’s just a matter of choice. As if you simply decide to study abroad, apply, and go.
But anyone who’s gone through the process knows — it’s not that simple.

I’ve worked for years with students from Eastern Europe trying to study in France and other parts of Europe. And I’ve seen up close how access to mobility depends on much more than academic motivation. It depends on your passport, your visa history, your ability to navigate bureaucracies in foreign languages, your financial safety net and frankly, luck.

We like to frame education as a tool for equality. But when access to that education depends on mobility, and mobility is restricted by geopolitical or economic barriers, the system reproduces the same exclusions it’s meant to fix.

Some people can study abroad at 18 because it’s normal in their family and financially feasible. Others can’t even get a student visa with a full scholarship. They’re asked to prove that they will “return home,” that they are “serious,” that they “deserve” this chance as if education should only be given to those who don’t really want to stay.

There’s also a quiet double standard: mobility is encouraged when it’s framed as academic excellence, but suspicious when it’s linked to migration. Especially for people coming from outside the EU. And especially now, when many countries treat borders less as formalities and more as political weapons.

Mobility, in theory, is a tool for collaboration, dialogue, and growth. But in practice, it still mirrors power imbalances. Even programs designed to be “open” often have hidden filters in language, in cultural expectations, in the very idea of who fits where.

If we want mobility to mean something more than just privilege for a few, we have to rethink the frameworks. Make them more transparent. More fair. And more grounded in the idea that education, at its core, is not a transaction. It’s a shared process.

I write this not just as a teacher or consultant, but as someone who lives in-between: between languages, countries, and systems. For many of us, mobility is not an escape. It’s how we build meaning.

That’s why I wrote this in English. Because it’s still the default language in global education. But I carry my other languages — French, Russian — with me in every line.

@lilian_lori

Сначала #Jacquemus сделали вот такой детский ролик для НГ, потом переодели детишек - реально или применив чудеса компьютерной графики, не знаю.

Но этого мало - на днях открыли мини-кинотеатр Le Mini Cinema в парижской Галерее Лафайет. Для детей. Вот как создается лояльное к бренду комьюнити и продажи стимулируются.

Кстати, сумочки Jacquemus мега популярны - никакого в них сверхудобства не нахожу, а вот силы бренда хоть отбавляй.

#французскаямода