Swedish Industrial VET and Placements Abroad

This study is part of a larger project that aims at balancing the higher education biased picture of knowledge transfer through international mobility, by emphasising workers on lower educational levels in 20th and 21st century Sweden. The present part study examines the views on experience and knowledge acquired abroad among students at six upper secondary schools connected with Swedish multinational industrial companies. The study is based on 20 in-depth interviews with school representatives and students who have been abroad as well as students who will go abroad the year after the interviews were completed. Our main hypothesis is that modern companies, due to the increasing globalisation process, attach more and more importance to personal skills like foreign language proficiency, intercultural competence, and inclination for mobility rather than “pure” technical knowledge. As future employees the students have to accustom themselves to work in foreign countries as well as to interact with collaborators all over the world. Placements abroad thus are expected to prepare the students for working in an international arena. For the students’ part, a relevant question is whether their experiences from placements abroad will give them competitive labour market advantages compared to youth without foreign experience.