Towards a European academic labour market? Some lessons drawn from empirical studies on academic mobility

In Europe, academic mobility has a long tradition which began with the birth of the European universities in the middle ages. Recently, European policies were strongly oriented towards the promotion of student and academic mobility and the creation of research networks and projects within Europe. Nevertheless, academic labour markets in Europe remain highly national and many obstacles hinder the development of European careers and the europeanisation/internationalisation of academic recruitments. Two different perspectives will be developed in this paper. First we will document the strong divergences among the national recruitment and careers processes within Europe and the problems raised by this situation. Second, we will draw on two empirical studies we conducted on academic mobility, the first one, led in 1995 in France, Germany and the UK and the second this year in France. Both studies show that most post-docs conceived their foreign experience as a personal strategy and aimed at improving their chances for recruitment in their own country. Within Europe, foreign country careers still are an exception due to "accidental'' opportunities.