YOUTH 2020 - The position of young people in Slovenia

100 Learning mobility is a central topic in conversations about mobility, as education offers young Europeans the most such opportunities. The 2009 Green Paper on promoting learning mobility for young people de- fines learning mobility as (transnational) mobility for acquiring new skills and as one of themainways inwhich people, especially young peo- ple, can improve their employability and strengthen their personal de- velopment (European Commission, 2009). At the same time, Europeans who are more (educationally) mobile in their youth are expected to be more mobile in the future when they participate in the labour market. Thus, using the example of young people, Bertocini et al. (2008) find that youth mobility contributes to their overall adaptability; more specifical- ly, to their (re)integration into the (supra)national labour market (see also Findlay et al., 2006). Mobility should enable people to acquire the knowledge and skills required in today’s global economy and labour market, e.g. foreign language skills, open-mindedness, tolerance of dif- ferences, willingness to engage in intercultural dialogue, and the ability to work across borders (Klanjšek, 2011: 401). In line with the above, using student mobility as an example, King and Ruiz-Gelices (2003) found that mobile students are more likely to hold better-paid jobs after graduation, are more likely to apply for jobs abroad and are more likely to see their careers in an international environment. However, mobility can also have negative consequences for both individ- uals and the country at large. Changes in the labour market, such as an ageing workforce, longer working lives, lower birth rates, and economic trends such as the so-called ‘global war for talent’ (Brown, & Tannock, 2009), also have a significant impact on young people’s mobility. It is the ‘global war for talent’ and the associated ‘brain drain’ (cleverly packaged in the rhetoric of mobility) that is seen as a battleground of sorts for the so-called ‘global meritocracy’ (Beechler, & Woodward, 2009). The ‘bat- tle for talent’ and the related phenomenon of the so-called ‘corporatisa- tion of talent’ is a policy problem par excellence: changes in migration policies and labour market adjustments inmany countries that encourage immigration of the best qualified (the ‘best and brightest’). Young people (especially those with tertiary education) have the highest emigration