ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the implications of an interdisciplinary approach to understanding student mobility comprehensively. Organised into dichotomies, this final reflection paints a forward vision by polarising ten fundamental premises or leverage points for further reasoning and critical evaluation of the existing body of knowledge about student mobility in European higher education. There is a dual condition in learning from social co-participation in study abroad. The communities of practice formed by mobile students can function as a ‘shelter’ against feelings of isolation and a source of culture-general learning, but also as a ‘fence’ hampering actual socialisation between sojourners and hosts and, by implication, culture-specific learning. Looking at the study abroad experience longitudinally, it is interesting to note that although it often starts as an individual experience it quickly becomes a group experience in which group dynamics shape part of the opportunities and outcomes accruing from the stay abroad.
