Ideal Jobs and International Student Mobility in the Enlarged European Union

doi:10.1016/j.emj.2004.09.032

European Management Journal Vol. 22, No. 6, pp. 693–703, 2004

� 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Printed in Great Britain

0263-2373 $30.00

Ideal Jobs andInternational StudentMobility in theEnlarged EuropeanUnion

ANNE-WIL HARZING, The University of Melbourne

After the enlargement of the European Union (EU)with ten new countries on the 1st of May 2004,international labour mobility within the EU hasbecome a rather contentious issue. This articlelooks at international mobility for a highly skilledgroup of people: university students in Businessand Commerce. In this context, we first investigatewhat students across Europe are looking for in theirideal job and show that students from both EasternEurope and Turkey differ substantially from otherEuropean countries in this respect. In the secondpart of this article, we assess whether students arelikely to move internationally by looking at theextent to which they are attached to their own coun-try/language. This analysis shows that, overall, stu-dents from Eastern Europe and Turkey are lesskeen to work internationally than students frommany other European countries. On the other hand,the final part of the article shows that students fromEastern Europe and Turkey generally seem wellprepared for international work in terms of theirlanguage skills. They prefer to work in Anglo-phone and Southern European countries and previ-ous international experience and language skillsare shown to be a major influence on the extentand direction of international mobility.� 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: International labour mobility, Euro-pean Union, University students, Ideal jobs

European Management Journal Vol. 22, No. 6, pp. 693–703, December 20

Introduction

After the enlargement of the European Union (EU)with ten new countries on the 1st of May 2004, inter-national labour mobility within the EU has become acontentious issue. Employment and immigration1

were seen as the two most important topics for theEuropean elections (Eurobarometer 61, 2004) by thefifteen original EU members. In the EU-15, only 2%of the population have decided to live and workin another country (http://www.europa.eu.int/comm/enlargement/faq), but the increased eco-nomic diversity within the EU-25 might well meanthat international labour mobility might becomemore prevalent. In this context, attention seems tohave largely been focused on the mobility of un-skilled or low-skilled migrants. In contrast, this arti-cle looks at international mobility for a highlyskilled group of people: university students in Busi-ness and Commerce. As indicated by Eurobarometer61 (2004) emigration of highly qualified workersfrom economically less to economically more dev-eloped countries has both positive and negative ef-fects for the home countries. Although emigrationcan provide an outlet for those people who are frus-trated with the pace of transition in less developedcountries, possibly alleviating serious political prob-lems, it also means that these countries are losingtheir best human resources. Investment in educationis transferred from poor to rich countries and thismight slow down the development of the poorercountries (Piracha and Vickerman, nd). On the otherhand, if the migration is short-term, further skill

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http://www.europa.eu.int/comm/enlargement/faq

http://www.europa.eu.int/comm/enlargement/faq

IDEAL JOBS AND INTERNATIONAL STUDENT MOBILITY IN THE ENLARGED EUROPEAN UNION

acquisition abroad might have a long-term positiveimpact on the development of the home country. Inaddition, financial remittances to non-migrating fam-ily members back home and accumulation of savingsmight result in better health care and education forchildren (Piracha and Vickerman, nd). Internationalmobility of highly-qualified workers could thereforebe a mixed blessing for the new EU countries.

In this context, the first part of this article investigateswhat students across Europe look for in their idealjob. The study includes eleven of the original fifteenEU countries (the only countries missing are Bel-gium, Luxembourg, Ireland and Italy), two countriesthat have recently joined the EU (Poland and Lithua-nia), two countries that are prospective EU candi-dates (Bulgaria and Turkey) and the largest EasternEuropean country: Russia. To what extent can wedistinguish clusters of countries across Europe andwhat can we conclude from this in terms of labourmobility? The second part of this article assesseswhether students are likely to move internationallyby investigating the extent to which they are attachedto their own country/language. Finally, we look attheir level of preparation for international work interms of language skills and international experienceand assess which countries are the most popularmigration destinations.

The remainder of this article is structured as follows.First, the next section will briefly review the litera-ture with regard to cross-country differences in workgoals and ideal jobs. A discussion of the methodsused in our study is then followed by a presentationand discussion of the results. Finally, we draw someconclusions with regard to international mobility.

Literature Review

Although there are many studies that have investi-gated cultural differences between countries (seee.g. Hofstede, 1980/2001; Schwartz and Bilsky,1987; Trompenaars, 1993), relatively few studies havecompared cross-country differences in work goalsand ideal jobs. Sirota and Greenwood (1971) com-pared work goals for three occupational groups(salesmen, technical personnel and service person-nel) across 25 countries and found relatively few dif-ferences between countries. However, the countriescould be classified into five cultural groupings (+six countries that could not be classified): Anglo,French, Northern Europe, Southern Latin Americaand Northern Latin America that did show some dif-ferences in work goals. Harpaz (1990) studied workgoals in 7 countries (Belgium, Germany, Israel, Ja-pan, The Netherlands, the UK and the USA). He alsofound relatively few systematic differences betweencountries in the ranking of work goals. Interestingwork, good pay and good interpersonal relationships

694 Europe

were the three most important work goals in most ofthe countries. However, all countries in this surveywere similar in the sense that they are economicallyhighly developed countries.

The Gooderham and Nordhaug (2001/02) studyforms the closest comparison to our study as theirsample included business school students from ele-ven different (Western) European countries. Theyused ideal job characteristics to approximate threeof Hofstede’s four cultural dimensions (Masculin-ity-Femininity, Individualism-Collectivism andUncertainty Avoidance), while the importance ofpower related management competences was usedto measure the fourth dimension (Power Distance).Their questions for the first two dimensions closelyresemble the questions loading on our Intrinsic &Influence (Individualism) and Money, Prestige &Advancement (Masculinity) factors (see Methods).Their results, which show very minimal differencesbetween the eleven countries, lead them to concludethat cultural differences in Europe are on the decline.However, the authors did not control for responsebias (see below) and hence their comparison of meanscores might be problematic.

None of the above studies on work values includedEastern European countries into their sample. East-ern European countries were included in Smithet al.’s (1996) study on national cultural values andwere found to cluster together and differ consider-ably from the other countries in the survey. TheGlobe leadership studies identified ten societal clus-ters with the Eastern European countries formingone cluster (Gupta et al., 2002), although in this caseGreece was also included in the Eastern Europeancluster. However, neither of these two studies fo-cused on ideal job characteristics or work goals.Our study therefore is the first to compare differ-ences in ideal job characteristics between both Wes-tern and Eastern European countries.

Methods

Sample and Questionnaire Administration

Data were collected in eleven of the fifteen originalEU countries; the only countries missing were Bel-gium, Luxembourg, Italy and Ireland. Two of thenew entrants, Lithuania and Poland, were includedas well as one country that is planning to join in2007 (Bulgaria). In addition, Turkey, that will be al-lowed to start accession negotiations once it meetspolitical criteria, and Russia, the largest EasternEuropean country, were included. Respondents werefinal year university students following a course inBusiness Administration, Business & Management,Commerce or a similar subject. International stu-dents were excluded from our sample, so that ourcomparisons only included students that could be

an Management Journal Vol. 22, No. 6, pp. 693–703, December 2004


assumed to be representative of the country in whichthey studied.2 The project was part of a study inves-tigating the impact of the language of the question-naire on students’ responses. Responses wereshown to be significantly different between the Eng-lish-language questionnaire and the native-languagequestionnaire, showing a pattern of cultural accom-modation (see Harzing and Maznevski, 2002; Har-zing, 2003). Hence, in this study we only used thesample of students that responded to a questionnairein their native language. Language versions wererandomly distributed and respondents were not al-lowed to choose which language version they com-pleted. The resulting sample sizes ranged from 44for Russia and Denmark to 125 for the British sample,but for most were in the range of 50–80 respondents.The total sample included 1153 students. Data werecollected at two Dutch universities, one in Gronin-gen, the smallish capital of the rural province Gron-ingen in the north of The Netherlands, and one inRotterdam, capital of South Holland, and one of thelargest cities in The Netherlands. The data for mostcountries were collected between February and Octo-ber 2001, while data for Finland, Spain, Turkey andLithuania were collected between March and Octo-ber 2002. Although it would have been preferableto collect data closer to the actual accession date,we do not expect student opinions and characteris-tics to have changed drastically in just a couple ofyears. In addition, EU enlargement to include East-ern European countries has already been on theagenda for a long time.

All country collaborators received a 15-page docu-ment containing very detailed instructions aboutthe aim of the study, items and constructs, resultsof the pilot study, translation, data collection anddata entry procedures, as well as agreements aboutco-authorship. All collaborators received access tothe final data set. A document with personal intro-ductions to all collaborators was prepared to pro-mote group cohesion and facilitate networkingamong collaborators.

Measures

The original questionnaire was designed in English.It was pilot tested in the UK in October 2000. The pi-lot study coincided with a discussion among the firsteight country collaborators about translatability ofitems. Several items that proved to be difficult totranslate were replaced. Subsequently, bilingualcountry collaborators were responsible for thetranslation of the original English questionnaire.Translations were conducted using translation-back-translation procedures. The translator andback-translator where separate individuals who didnot enter into a discussion until after they had fini-shed their translations. Discussions between transla-tor and back-translator usually resulted in change ofsome of the translations. Where difficulties remained,


a third bilingual person was consulted. The back-translated versions were verified by the project coor-dinator for consistency across languages, whichusually resulted in further changes and discussionsbetween translator and back-translator. For severalof the European languages, the project coordinatorprovided independent verification of the translatedversions.

Questions to assess the importance of various charac-teristics of the students’ ideal job after graduationwere adapted from Sirota and Greenwood (1971)and Hofstede (1980). A total of eighteen ideal jobcharacteristics were included in the questionnaireand students were asked to assess the relative impor-tance of each on a 5-point Likert scale (of very little orno importance–of utmost importance). These ques-tions were subsequently subjected to factor analysis(principal components, with oblique rotation). Bart-lett’s test of sphericity was highly significant(4471.117, p < 0.000) and KMO’s measure of sam-pling adequacy was 0.79, which indicates that factoranalysis is appropriate. The 18 questions were re-duced to four relatively clear factors.

As can be seen in Table 1, the first factor includedcharacteristics that referred to a balance betweenwork and private life and having a job that was notvery demanding, but allowed good relationshipswith others. It was labelled balance & relationships.The second factor represented mainly job intrinsicelements as well as the ability to influence the orga-nisation’s policies and was labelled intrinsic & influ-ence. Factor 3 clearly referred to monetary rewards,prestige and advancement and was therefore la-belled money, prestige & advancement. The final factorwould seem to refer to an orientation to serve andfollow rules and was labelled following & serving.Scale reliabilities were subsequently calculated foreach of the factors and were deemed acceptable, gi-ven the wide range of countries represented in oursample (see Table 1).

Two statements were used to probe attachment to thestudents’ home country and native language: ‘‘I con-sider myself a citizen of the world and would like to workin other countries than my home country after finishingmy studies,’’ and, ‘‘If I could speak English like a nativespeaker, I would not mind using English as often as mynative language’’. Students were asked to indicatetheir agreement to each of the two statements on afive-point Likert scale (strongly disagree–stronglyagree). In addition, students were asked to list anycountries in which they had lived for more than 3months and any foreign languages in which theywere able to communicate on at least an intermediatelevel. They were also asked to indicate how typicalthey considered their views to be of people who livein the country in which they were born (scale 1–10)and the country in which they would prefer to liveif they didn’t live in their home country. Finally, theirEnglish language competence was probed with two

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Table 1 Factor Analysis of Ideal Job Characteristics

Cronbach’s Alphas

0.69 0.73 0.64 0.60

Job: Have a good working relationship with your direct supervisor 0.697

Job: Have friendly colleagues who help each other 0.662

Job: Have an opportunity to balance your work and private life 0.646

Job: Have security of employment 0.604 0.339

Job: Have the opportunity to share responsibility for a task with others 0.547 �0.391

Job: Have little tension and stress on the job 0.542 �0.327

Job: Have the opportunity to take full responsibility for a task 0.680

Job: Make a real contribution to the success of your organisation 0.652

Job: Have considerable freedom to adapt your own approach to the job 0.633

Job: Be consulted by your direct superior in his/her decisions 0.620

Job: Have challenging work to do 0.609

Job: Have an element of variety and adventure in the job 0.602

Job: Have an opportunity for high earnings 0.773

Job: Work in a prestigious, successful company or organisation 0.737 �0.343

Job: Have an opportunity for advancement to higher level jobs 0.413 0.683

Job: Serve your country �0.759

Job: Have an opportunity for helping other people 0.342 �0.716

Job: Work according to clear and stable rules and regulations 0.350 �0.670

Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis. Rotation Method: Oblimin with Kaiser Normalization


questions: How often do you read English? (daily, sev-eral times a week, weekly, once a month or less)and How would you assess your capability to understandwritten English? (8-point scale, very weak—fullybilingual).3

Previous research has demonstrated a significantcountry effect on respondents’ tendency to use dif-ferent parts of the scale (Leung and Bond, 1989; Mul-len, 1995; Singh, 1995). Since this would impact onour between-country comparisons, it is importantto assess whether these response effects are presentin our sample. In order to assess differences in re-sponse styles across the sixteen countries includedin our survey, we averaged each respondent’s an-swers on the total of eighteen ideal job questions.Even though all countries showed an acquiescencebias (i.e. average response above the mid-point ofthe scale), an ANOVA analysis showed very signifi-cant differences between countries (F = 14.633,p < 0.000). Finland, Denmark, The Netherlands (bothsamples4), and Austria showed a relatively lowacquiescence bias (average response 3.40–3.58). Amedium level of acquiescence (average response3.67–3.77) was found for Lithuania, Germany, Swe-den, France, Russia, Spain, Poland and the UK, whilePortugal, Bulgaria, Turkey, and Greece showed highlevels of acquiescence (3.85–4.00). Similar differenceshave been found by Van Herk et al. (2004) and havebeen shown to reflect response styles rather than truepreferences. Clearly this has important implicationsfor the interpretation of attitude surveys in the Euro-pean Union.

The established procedure for removing bias associ-ated with scale response is within-person standardi-sation (Leung and Bond, 1989). The four ideal job

696 Europe

scales were subsequently recalculated using the stan-dardised data. With the exception of the questionsabout attachment to home country and native lan-guage, other questions were factual and hence wouldnot be expected to be subject to substantial responsebias. The questions about attachment to home coun-try and native language were part of a section thatshowed far weaker response style effects than othersections of the questionnaire. Moreover, the responsestyles that were present were completely contrary tothe response styles for ideal jobs and known differ-ences in response styles (e.g. high acquiescence biasfor Austria, Finland and Sweden and low acquies-cence bias for Turkey, Portugal and Greece). Wetherefore concluded that for these questions theunstandardised score probably provided a moretruthful picture of the students’ true preferences.However, these differences do illustrate the tremen-dous difficulty in conducting valid comparisons be-tween European countries.

Results and Discussion

Ideal Job Characteristics

The four Ideal Job scales and the sixteen countrieswere subjected to a TwoStep Cluster Analysis. TheTwoStep Cluster Analysis procedure is a new SPSScluster analysis tool designed to reveal naturalgroupings (or clusters) within a data set. The advan-tage over traditional clustering techniques is that itcan deal with both categorical and continuous data.It is hence ideally suited to determine clusters ofideal job characteristics and cluster membership bycountry at the same time. The technique allows the


Table 2 Ideal Job Characteristics, 3-Cluster Solution

Job characteristics Intrinsic &

Influence

Balance &

Relationships

Money, Prestige &

Advancement

Following &

Serving

Bulgaria, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Turkey 0.02 �0.03 0.48 �0.34

Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Netherlands (1+2) 0.46 �0.04 0.07 �0.69

Finland, Greece, Portugal, Sweden, UK, Spain 0.25 0.11 0.20 �0.63

Total 0.26 0.02 0.20 �0.57


researcher to either let the optimal number of clustersbe determined automatically or fix the number ofclusters in the solution.

Overall, students in our sample consider job intrinsic& influence characteristics to be most important intheir ideal job, closely followed by the money, pres-tige & advancement items. Characteristics related tobalance & relationships come third, while following& serving is clearly least important for students inour sample. However, as Table 2 shows there aresubstantial differences between the three clustersdetermined automatically by the TwoStep ClusterAnalysis. The first cluster has a clear focus on money,prestige & advancement and also has a higher fol-lowing & serving orientation than the other clusters.All Eastern European countries and Turkey arefound in this cluster. The second cluster is dominatedby a clear focus on the job-intrinsic & influence fac-tor, while the other factors are all relatively unimpor-tant. This cluster includes three of the six originalEuropean Community members plus Austria andDenmark. The third cluster shows a nearly equalpreference for the intrinsic & influence factor andthe money, prestige & advancement factor, with asecondary importance for balance & relationships.A rather mixed group of countries is included in thissample, including the UK and the more recent Scan-dinavian entrants (both countries joined in 1995) aswell as the three Southern European countries thatjoined the EU between 1981 and 1986.

The mix of countries in cluster 3 is interesting, as theSouthern European countries are usually classified asa different cultural cluster than the Western/North-ern European countries (see e.g. Hofstede, 1980/2001; Ronen and Shenkar, 1985). We therefore ranthe TwoStep Cluster Analysis again, fixing the num-ber of clusters to four. As Table 3 shows, this did notchange the first two clusters, but it did split the thirdcluster into two distinct clusters. The first of these

Table 3 Ideal Job Characteristics, 4-Cluster Solution

Job Characteristics Intrinsi

Influen

Bulgaria, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Turkey 0.02

Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Netherlands (1+2) 0.46

Greece, Portugal, Spain 0.13

Finland, Sweden, UK 0.32

Total 0.26


includes the three Southern European countries andshows an equal preference for the intrinsic & influ-ence ideal job characteristics and the balance & rela-tionship job characteristics. The cluster alsoresembles the Eastern European countries and Tur-key in attaching a higher importance to the following& serving characteristics than the Northern and Wes-tern European countries. The fourth cluster now onlyincludes Finland, Sweden and the UK and shows ahigh importance for the intrinsic & influence idealjob characteristics and a high secondary importancefor money, prestige and advancement. Overallthough, it is clear that the main distinction is betweenEastern European countries and Turkey on the onehand and the remaining European countries on theother.

Attachment to Home Country and Native Language

Since students from Eastern European countries andTurkey attach a high importance to money, prestigeand advancement they might be interested to find ajob in more economically advanced countries. Inthe EU-15, only 2% of the population have emigratedto another country, but the increased economicdiversity within the EU-25 might well mean that emi-gration becomes more important. And given thatBulgaria and Turkey (and Romania) have an evenlower GDP per capita than any of the 10 new en-trants, entrance of these countries into the EU mightlead to even higher emigration levels. However, mostpeople are still reluctant to leave their own countriesand working in another country would normally alsomean working in another language (often English).To what extent are the students in our sample at-tached to their home country and native language?

As Figure 1 shows students in Russia, Turkey andLithuania show the lowest inclination to work out-side their home countries. Polish students are more

c &

ce

Balance &

Relationships

Money, Prestige &

Advancement

Following &

Serving

�0.03 0.48 �0.34

�0.04 0.07 �0.69

0.12 �0.03 �0.35

0.10 0.23 �0.80

0.02 0.20 �0.57

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Figure 1 Attachment to Home Country/Native Language


likely to consider this option, but even they do notshow a very strong acceptance of international work.Students from many Western, Northern and South-ern European countries score higher than the Polishstudents. Bulgarian students show a surprisinglystrong preference for international work, the stron-gest among all countries. However, this is likely tobe due to the slightly idiosyncratic nature of the Bul-garian sample. Unlike the other countries where ourrespondents were students completing a degree inBusiness Administration, Business & Managementor Commerce, the Bulgarian students that respondedto the native-language questionnaire were complet-ing a degree in International Relations that wouldbe likely to lead to an international career path. Bul-garian students that responded to the English-lan-guage questionnaire (and were hence excludedfrom this article), studied Business Administration.Their scores (shown in brackets) are very similar tothe scores of Lithuanian students and show a lowpreference for international work.

With respect to the willingness to use English as of-ten as their native language, the Eastern Europeanand Turkish students again score rather low. Turk-ish, Lithuanian and Bulgarian (business) studentsall score at or below the middle of the scale. Polishand Russian students score a bit higher, but mostof the Western, Northern and Southern Europeancountries show a higher willingness to speak Englishas often as their native tongue. The ranking of coun-tries of this statement begs the question of whetherEnglish language capability could have influencedthe students’ willingness to speak English, in spiteof the fact that the statement clearly included the pro-viso ‘‘if I could speak English like a native speaker’’.However, an ANOVA analysis with the two differentmeasures of English language capability does notshow any significant differences, neither for the over-all sample, nor for the individual countries. Thisseems to imply that students have replied to thisquestion truthfully and that it can be interpreted asan attachment to native language, irrespective oftheir English language skills.

Overall then, students in the new and prospectivemember states do not seem to have a strong disposi-tion to work in other countries. They are certainly

698 Europe

less inclined to want to do so than students in mostNorthern, Western and Southern European coun-tries. In the next two sections we will explore to whatextent students in the different countries alreadyhave international experience, what their preferencesare in terms of the countries they would like to live inand what their actual foreign language skills are.

International Experience and EmigrationPreferences

We asked students to list the countries (other thantheir home country) in which they had lived for morethan 3 months. As Table 4 shows, overall nearly threequarters of the students did not have any interna-tional experience.

However, there are large differences between coun-tries in this respect, with the Scandinavian countriesand France showing a very high level of internationalexperience and Turkey and Portugal showing a verylow level of international experience. However, the le-vel of international experience in the Scandinaviancountries and France is probably biased upwardssince students in these countries were generally olderthan the other respondents. With regard to the newand prospective EU countries the pattern is varied.While Turkish and Bulgarian students generally havea very low level of international experience, nearly 1 in2 Polish, Lithuanian and Russian students have livedin at least one other country than their own. With re-gard to the countries that students have lived in formore than 3 months, the USA, the UK and Germanyare the only countries that are mentioned more thanincidentally. And while experience in the Anglophonecountries is fairly evenly spread over all Europeancountries, half of the number of students spendingmore than 3 months in Germany was from either Fin-land or Poland. The large number of international stu-dent exchange programmes with universities in theUK and the US might explain the dominance of thesetwo countries in the students’ international experi-ence, while geographical closeness might explain thePolish preference for Germany.

Interestingly, students who have lived abroad formore than 3 months at least once, are very signifi-


Table 4 Extent of International Experience and Country Preferences (Ordered by Average Number ofCountries Lived in)

Country/No Countries Lived In 0 1 2 or More If You Would Not Live in Your Home Country, Where Would

You Prefer to Live? Top 5 Countries Listed*

Turkey 92% 8% 0% USA, UK, any country, Canada/Italy, Australia

Portugal 92% 7% 1% USA, UK, Brazil, France, Canada/Netherlands

UK 89% 10% 1% USA, Australia, Spain, Canada/France

Bulgaria 87% 9% 4% USA/Spain, Germany/UK, Italy, Australia/Switzerland

Greece 81% 17% 2% USA, Italy, Spain, France

Netherlands (G) 84% 10% 6% USA, UK, Spain, Italy, Canada/France

Germany 80% 16% 4% USA/any country, Italy, Spain, Australia/France

Spain 76% 21% 4% USA, Italy, France, UK, Australia

Netherlands (R) 76% 15% 9% USA, France/Italy, any country, UK

Austria 62% 26% 11% Italy, USA, France/any country, Australia/Canada/UK

Poland 50% 46% 4% USA, UK, any country, Australia, Germany

Lithuania 56% 37% 7% USA, France/Sweden, Australia/Germany/Spain/UK

Russia 60% 27% 14% Any country/Spain, Germany, Europe/UK/USA, Italy

Finland 55% 31% 14% UK, Sweden, USA, Germany, Australia/France

Sweden 52% 23% 26% UK, USA, Canada/France, Spain, Italy

France 38% 43% 16% Australia, Spain/USA, Canada, Italy

Denmark 23% 46% 31% UK, USA, any country/Australia, France, Italy

Total 72% 20% 8% USA (21%), UK (10%), Australia/France/Italy/Spain (�8% each)

*Only 4 countries mentioned if 5th country has <5% of votes


cantly (t = 8.494, p < 0.000) more likely to agree withthe statement ‘‘I consider myself a citizen of the worldand would like to work in other countries than my homecountry after finishing my studies’’. This effect is pres-ent in every country in the survey, but because thenumber of students with international experience issmall in many countries, the difference is not alwayssignificant on a country-level. Significant differencesare found in Austria, Germany, Greece, Lithuania,Poland, Portugal, The Netherlands (both samples)and Russia. In all these cases effect sizes are veryconsiderable: on average students with internationalexperience score a full point higher on the five-pointscale than students without experience. The directionof causality is unclear though: are students withinternational experience more likely to want to workinternationally or are students who have a preferencefor working internationally more likely to seek outinternational experience? Only a longitudinal studywould be able to answer this question.

Students with international experience also considerthemselves to be significantly (t = 2.176, p = 0.03) lesstypical of their home country than students withoutinternational experience. These results are also repro-duced at a country-level, but with smaller samplesizes are generally not significant. Results for Turkeyare particularly strong: students with internationalexperience see themselves as rather a-typical (4 ona 10-point scale) of their country. However, giventhe small number of students in Turkey with interna-tional experience, this result should be consideredwith caution. Again, however, causality is difficultto establish: are students with international experi-


ence less typical, or do students who are less typicalseek international experience?

Students were also asked which countries theywould prefer to live in if they didn’t live in theirhome country. Overall, the USA was a clear favour-ite, getting one in five votes, with the UK a rather dis-tant second. One other Anglophone country(Australia) and three Southern European countries(Spain, Italy, and France) were the only other coun-tries to get a substantial number of votes. Togetherthese six countries drew nearly two thirds of the stu-dents’ votes. The order of preference for individualcountries shows the USA at the top for most coun-tries, although students in the Scandinavian coun-tries prefer the UK to the USA, while for Austrianand French students Italy and Australia are higheron their list of preferences than the USA. Russian stu-dents seem least specific in their preferences with‘‘any country’’ and ‘‘Europe’’ getting a rather highnumber of votes. Interestingly, the UK is absent inthe top-5 preferred countries for Greece, France andGermany with only 1 student in each country listingthe UK as their preferred choice. Overall, countrypreferences appear to be motivated by language(Anglophone countries) and life style/climate(France, Italy, Spain).

Comparing the countries that students have lived infor more than 3 months with the countries theywould prefer to live in shows a rather high level ofconcordance. Half of the students who have experi-ence in Australia list it as their preferred country,versus only 7% of those who haven’t. Students who

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have already lived in France or Spain are five timesas likely to list this country as their preferred choice.Students are also twice as likely to list the UK and theUSA as their first preference if they have lived therebefore. These results either indicate that studentshave been able to realise their first country prefer-ence in their international experience so far, or thatfamiliarity with a country positively influences a stu-dent’s perception of this country. Interestingly, nosuch effect is present for Italy. Even though only 3students have ever lived in Italy, it is the 3rd mosthighly preferred destination country, narrowlytopped by the UK.

Foreign Language Skills

We asked students to list the foreign languages theywere able to communicate in on at least an interme-diate level. The results are shown in Table 5.

The importance of English as the language of busi-ness in Europe is clearly illustrated by the fact that97% of the students in our sample spoke Englishand by the fact that the British students showed thelowest level of foreign language skills. Overall, for-eign language skills seem to be rather low in Turkey,Poland and Bulgaria as well as the Southern Euro-pean countries and high in the Scandinavian coun-tries as well as Russia and Lithuania. Lithuania’shigh score is caused by the fact that nearly all stu-dents speak Russian as well as English, while lan-guage skills of the Russian students are varied. Ourresults also show that the accession of Eastern Euro-pean countries and Turkey is likely to increase theimportance of the German language in the European

Table 5 Foreign Language Skills (Ordered by Average

Languages

Country

0 1 2 3 4 or More Mean % E

UK 36% 41% 18% 4% 1% 0.9 –

Turkey 0% 62% 37% 1% 0% 1.4 100%

Spain 4% 57% 35% 5% 0% 1.4 95%

Poland 0% 44% 50% 6% 0% 1.6 100%

Portugal 3% 42% 43% 9% 3% 1.7 93%

Bulgaria 0% 36% 50% 12% 3% 1.8 100%

Greece 2% 29% 52% 16% 2% 1.9 97%

France 2% 14% 67% 14% 2% 2.0 95%

Netherl (R) 4% 32% 36% 17% 11% 2.0 96%

Germany 0% 34% 30% 32% 4% 2.1 98%

Netherl (G) 0% 26% 43% 26% 6% 2.1 99%

Denmark 0% 18% 50% 21% 11% 2.3 100%

Russia 0% 11% 57% 27% 5% 2.3 98%

Austria 2% 13% 40% 34% 11% 2.4 96%

Sweden 0% 10% 47% 31% 13% 2.5 95%

Lithuania 0% 2% 40% 46% 13% 2.7 95%

Finland 0% 0% 16% 49% 35% 3.3 99%

Total 5% 30% 39% 19% 7% 1.9 97%

700 Europe

Union. While knowledge of French is negligible ex-cept in Russia, one third to one half of the studentsin these five countries speak German.

Language capabilities do seem to influence the coun-tries that students list as their preferred country tolive in. Two thirds of the students who list Franceas their preferred country speak French (comparedto one third in general) and students are four timesmore likely to prefer France to other countries if theyspeak French. The effect for Spanish is even slightlystronger. Over 40% of the students who list Spainas their favourite country speak Spanish (comparedto 16% in general) and students are four and a halftimes more likely to prefer Spain to other countriesif they speak Spanish. For German the effect is weaker,but still present: 57% of the students preferringGermany speak German (as opposed to 39% overall)and students are more than twice as likely to preferGermany to other countries if they speak German.However, since the number of students that pre-ferred Germany was rather small, these results mightnot be representative. Only very few students spokeItalian, so the preference for Italy seems to be inde-pendent of language skills. Although nearly all stu-dents claimed to speak English, the countries didvary in their level of English language competence.Table 6 shows the results for our two measures ofEnglish language competence. For the first measure,the categories ‘‘very weak’’, ‘‘weak’’, ‘‘moderate’’and ‘‘average’’ were collapsed into one, as there werevery few observations in these categories. It is clearthat the vast majority of students in our sample haveat least a good English language competence. Thereis, however, a substantial minority of students inFrance, Germany, Spain and Portugal that claim their

Number of Foreign Languages Spoken)

nglish % German % French % Spanish % Russian

26% 39% 8% 1%

32% 3% 1% 0%

6% 36% – 1%

50% 2% 2% 4%

3% 45% 26% 0%

30% 9% 8% 30%

16% 40% 17% 0%

33% – 48% 0%

51% 36% 8% 2%

– 48% 22% 2%

64% 36% 3% 0%

73% 11% 18% 0%

37% 34% 34% –

– 74% 34% 6%

55% 52% 11% 5%

42% 4% 4% 97%

70% 36% 8% 1%

39% 32% 16% 9%


Table 6 English Language Skills (Ordered by Average Assessment of Skills and Frequency of ReadingEnglish)

Country How Would You Assess Your Ability to Speak English? How Often Do You Read English?

Very Weak—

Average

Good Very

Good

Excellent—

Bilingual

Country Once a

Month or

Less

Once a

Week

Several

Times a Week

Daily

Spain 27% 39% 30% 4% Germany 53% 16% 18% 12%

Germany 31% 29% 33% 8% Spain 28% 40% 29% 4%

Portugal 29% 20% 40% 11% France 29% 39% 22% 10%

France 22% 36% 26% 16% Portugal 33% 29% 25% 12%

Poland 13% 42% 38% 8% Poland 13% 52% 35% –

Lithuania 16% 33% 33% 18% Lithuania 24% 33% 28% 15%

Netherlands (G) 15% 37% 37% 11% Greece 21% 27% 36% 16%

Greece 17% 19% 36% 27% Bulgaria 15% 31% 41% 13%

Netherlands (R) 9% 25% 40% 26% Austria 21% 2% 52% 25%

Turkey 8% 30% 42% 20% Netherlands (G) 7% 14% 48% 32%

Bulgaria 8% 23% 49% 20% Turkey 14% 10% 31% 45%

Russia 9% 21% 34% 36% Russia 7% 9% 50% 34%

Austria 13% 12% 39% 36% Finland 4% 9% 51% 36%

Denmark 9% 12% 27% 52% Netherlands (R) 8% – 43% 49%

Finland 4% 13% 37% 46% Sweden – 11% 39% 50%

Sweden 2% 11% 32% 55% Denmark 2% 5% 36% 57%

Total 14% 25% 37% 24% Total 17% 20% 37% 26%


English language capability is rather weak. This isalso reflected in the lower frequency with which stu-dents in these countries read English. English lan-guage skills are clearly highest in the Scandinaviancountries with half of the students claiming an excel-lent or bilingual level of English. English is obviouslyimportant as a language of instruction in these coun-tries as well: around 90% of the students in thesecountries read English daily or several times a week.

The Eastern European countries and Turkey vary intheir English language skills, with Poland and Lithu-ania scoring lower than Turkey, Russia and Bulgaria.However, 84% (Lithuania) to 91–2% (Russia, Turkeyand Bulgaria) of the students have at least a good le-vel of English language skills. The dominance of Rus-sian in Lithuania and the importance of German as a2nd foreign language in Poland might explain therelatively lower English language competence inthese countries. With good English language skillsand German as a 2nd foreign language for a thirdto half of the students in these countries, languageskills seem to be no barrier for international mobilityas these two languages would give students access toall Northern and most Western European countries.

The position of the Netherlands in this table is puz-zling, as the Dutch are usually classified with theScandinavians as having very good English languageskills. The frequency with which the Dutch studentsread English would suggest a higher level of Englishlanguage skills than their own assessment. TheDutch reluctance to stand out and classify oneselfas ‘‘excellent’’ (Hofstede, 1980, 2001) might be a


partial explanation for this puzzling result. Againthis shows the limitations of using perceptual mea-sures in cross-country comparisons.

Conclusions

This article investigated issues surrounding interna-tional mobility of highly skilled labour in Europe,using a matched sample of final year university stu-dents in Business & Commerce in sixteen countries.It showed that students in Eastern European coun-tries and Turkey generally show different prefer-ences with regard to their ideal type of job thanstudents in other European countries. Money, pres-tige and advancement are important motivators forstudents from these countries. Given the level of eco-nomic development in their home countries, thismight lead them to consider migration to other EUcountries. However, in general, Eastern Europeanand Turkish students seem less interested to workinternationally than students from most other Euro-pean countries and also show a lower willingnessto speak English instead of their native language.Students who do already have international experi-ence (most likely through student exchange pro-grammes) are far more likely to want to workabroad though. It is also important to note that East-ern European and Turkish students generally seemrather well prepared to work internationally. Withgood English language skills and German as a 2nd

foreign language for a third to half of the students

04 701


in these countries, language skills seem to be no bar-rier for international mobility as these two languageswould give them access to all Northern and mostWestern European countries.

Asked about their preferred countries, Anglophonecountries, such as the USA, the UK and Australiastand out, with the Southern European countries(Italy, Spain and France) being popular as well. Inaddition, it should be noted that students in the fourEastern European countries are the only ones, exceptfor Finland, listing Germany among their top-5 coun-tries. This is likely to be influenced by their Germanlanguage skills, as our results clearly show that hostcountry language skills substantially increase thelikelihood that students want to live in these coun-tries. Overall though, it appears that migration pat-terns for highly skilled labour might besubstantially different from those for unskilled orlow-skilled labour.

Finally, although the causality of this relationship isunclear, the fact that international experience is asso-ciated with a stronger preference for working abroadmeans that increased student exchange could be animportant impetus for international labour mobility.And since language skills seem to be a very impor-tant determinant for the country that students wouldprefer to work in, language education beyond Eng-lish remains an important means for promotingmobility within the European Union.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to express her gratitude to thefollowing country collaborators: Austria: Iris Fis-chlmayr, Johannes Kepler University, Linz, Bulgaria:Mila Lazarova, Simon Fraser University Canada,Denmark: Mikael Søndergaard, University of South-ern Denmark, Finland: Rebecca Marschan-Piekkari,Swedish School of Economics, France: Cordula Bar-zantny, Groupe ESC Toulouse Business School, Ger-many: Katrin Wittenberg, University of BradfordSchool of Management, UK, Greece: Barbara Myloni,Athens University of Economics and Business, Lithu-ania: Audra Mockaitis, Vilnius University, Laura Sal-ciuviene, Kaunas University of Technology,Netherlands: Ayse Saka, University of Groningen,Deanne Den Hartog, Erasmus University, Poland:Aleksandra Grzesiuk, West Pomeranian BusinessSchool, Portugal: Francisco B. Castro, CEMPRE, Fac-uldade de Economia do Porto, Universidade do Por-to, Russia: Graham Roberts, Groupe ESC Lille/LilleGraduate School of Management, France, Spain:Ignacio Martı́nez, University of Navarra, Sweden:Lena Zander, Ciara Karlsson, Laurence Romani,IIB, Stockholm School of Economics, Turkey: AydaUzuncarsili Soydas, Gozde Yilmaz, Marmara Univer-sity, United Kingdom: Alan Feely, Aston BusinessSchool.

702 Europe

Notes

1. Ex equo with security.2. Local students were defined as those who were born both in the

country of data collection and spoke the local language.3. For the UK these questions referred to the student’s first foreign

language.4. Data were collected at two Dutch universities, one in Gron-

ingen, the smallish capital of the rural province Groningen inthe north of The Netherlands, and one in Rotterdam, capital ofSouth Holland, and one of the largest cities in TheNetherlands.

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Ideal Jobs and International Student Mobility in the Enlarged European Union

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