Getting Lost

An international discussion on adequate education and new forms of learning was embedded in post-1989 socio-political scenario, which increasingly pronounced a knowledge-based economy. The idea of a time-framed instruction restricted to initial life stages was outdated in a dynamic society, that had changed continuously due to socio-political, economic and technological transformations. The European Union reacted accordingly and suggested to make learning a lifelong and lifewide process promoting geographical mobility for educational and professional motivations in order to stimulate economic growth and personal advancement on the social ladder.
However, recent data shows that successful educational and professional integration and thus an adequate match of competences and occupational profiles is still unsatisfactory in numerous European contexts, especially when speaking of qualified mobility.
This volume tackles the issue of professional inclusion of knowledgeable migrants under consideration of the paradigmatic life course framework and aims to contribute to international research on human capital valorisation. It thus strives to investigate professional trajectories and corresponding skill utilisation of mobile workers in a highly heterogenous European labour market that constantly requires actions to combat unemployment, the waste of skills, the invisibility of (hidden) educational capital and the lack of needed qualifications of its potential workforce.