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Manchester, United Kingdom — 22-25 September 2009

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Brexit a “huge problem” for cultural exchange

Jul 15, 2021

In the wake of Brexit, young people in the United Kingdom and the European Union have been left with fewer options to pursue immersive cultural exchange experiences in each other’s regions. At the end of 2020, the possibility dissolved for young people from the EU to travel to the UK as au pairs. Also, the UK withdrew from EU mobility schemes such as the Erasmus+ study abroad programme. While the UK’s Turing scheme aims to replace the opportunities previously offered to UK students through the Erasmus programme, many other forms of cultural exchange and the special visas to facilitate them have been left behind.

However, a campaign of the PROYOUTHVISA Alliance hopes to change this. The PROYOUTHVISA Alliance aims to raise awareness of the absence of a youth mobility agreement between the UK and the European Union. This alliance of organisation’s hopes to pave the way towards a new cultural exchange visa for youth of the UK and the EU.

We spoke to one of the organisations involved with the PROYOUTH VISA campaign – AuPairWorld. Have a listen to what their Managing Director, Ann-Kristin Cohrs, has to say about the need for international youth mobility and a visa to facilitate this between the UK and the EU.

“The reason why we started the campaign was that after Brexit we see a huge problem,” said Cohrs. “And the huge problem is that after decades of cultural exchange between EU countries and the UK, Brexit has stopped this youth cultural exchange. In our opinion, this is really a disaster and we wanted to change – to do something about it.”

 

 

What you will hear in this conversation:

  • Who would benefit from a new youth mobility visa for cultural exchange between the UK and the EU
  • What are the possible negative effects of there being no youth mobility between the UK and the EU
  • An existing model youth mobility scheme that could be used to solve the problem
  • What the PROYOUTH VISA campaign is doing about the problem
  • Who should get involved with the PROYOUTH VISA campaign.


More information about the PROYOUTH VISA campaign:
https://www.proyouthvisa.org/
#proyouthvisa

 

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