When young Europeans pack their bags to study abroad, they are often told they are about to embark on the best months or years of their lives. Yet, beneath the excitement of new cities, adventures and friendships lies something deeper, something philosophical and even political. The Erasmus project, launched in 1987, isn’t only about scholarships, it’s also a social experiment in integration and the push for greater European solidarity. The project’s architects believed that Europe’s future unity could not depend solely on treaties and markets, but on the fact that people feel European. Since its start, Erasmus has had up to 16 million participants, no doubt affecting the personal and professional lives of them all. I like looking at it as an institutionalized form of socialization, a process designed to build empathy and cooperation between nations and their people. I’ve lived and studied in two countries outside my homeland, and I’ve experienced the great intimacy of Europe and its people, the feeling of belonging not only to the places I’ve lived, but also to places I’ve never been and only encountered through others. I currently live in Italy, been here for over a year, and also did a short Erasmus Spring School in Antwerp, surrounded by students from all over the continent, and through these experiences I’ve felt this idea materialize. Everyone I meet comes from different cultures and lands, but through dialogue and curiosity, we’ve joined together in the solidarity that Erasmus was designed to instil. This blog is upheld by international students, and I think we can all agree that living abroad makes one appreciate the whole world a lot more. All those who can should try it and encourage it.

Socialization refers to the process by which individuals internalize the norms, values, and practices of a given society. Durkheim considered it the very mechanism through which collective conscience is formed, while Berger and Luckmann described it as the way reality itself becomes socially constructed. When socialization is institutionalized, it means that this shaping of attitudes and identities is not spontaneous but organized and embedded within structured programmes, curriculum, or rituals sanctioned by states and institutions. The Erasmus Programme is precisely such an institution. Born from the European Community’s desire to strengthen cooperation through education. Students are encouraged to see and experience Europe as a community that transcends borders and bureaucracies. Still, living abroad demands vulnerability as one must navigate new languages, bureaucracies, and social rules, but it’s this vulnerability that opens space for empathy between us. Students learn to listen, adapt, and negotiate meanings with peers from different cultural backgrounds. Through countless conversations over dinners, deadlines, and bar sitting, people practice the art of mutual recognition that Honneth identifies as the foundation of social freedom. A Bulgarian and an Icelander cooking together in Milan may have little in common politically or historically, but their cooperation and support for each other in everyday life shows the possibility of peaceful coexistence at a continental scale, and that can be the case for any country. Erasmus trains participants to see the familiar in the foreign and to approach difference not as threat but as enrichment to one’s life. In a world increasingly polarized by nationalist rhetoric, this cultivation of empathy and solidarity is profoundly political and can build a future that no directive or treaty can do. By funding such mobility, the EU is investing in the hearts of its citizens, building a connection between them and even loyalty to a European project, and not through rigorous propaganda but through lived experiences. The student who studies in another member state doesn’t simply learn in school, a professor on an Erasmus project in another member doesn’t simply teach, they both take in the customs, habits, and social rules of that state. This is why Erasmus can be seen as one of the most effective tools of integration in the EU’s history. In fact, one evaluation has found that participants’ sense of belonging to Europe increased measurably (from 3.81 to 4.01 on a 5-point scale) after undergoing an Erasmus project in another country. While monetary policy or defence initiatives often provoke controversy, Erasmus enjoys near-universal support, and it should be hard to find someone against it. The project humanizes Europe, and I believe that it gives remote institutions and headquarters in Brussels or Strasbourg more recognition and appreciation. In the long term, such affective ties may do more for peace and cooperation than any diplomatic treaty.

That said, the programme is not without its critics. It has been pointed out that Erasmus tends to favour middle-class and urban students, and that in a way it can reproduce rather than erase some inequalities. The cost of living abroad, even with grants, remains impossible for many. Moreover, the majority of participants move within a Western European circle and meet others from there, leaving peripheral regions heavily underrepresented as a destination. So, Erasmus might be accused of socializing a particular type of European, a Western European, while excluding others whose cultures and ideals come from different areas, but they are still no less European. Yet these limitations do not minimize the project’s potential. Even if it reaches a minority, Erasmus creates cultural ambassadors whose influence extends beyond their personal experience. They return home carrying not just new knowledge, but an understanding of interdependence, a habit of cooperation, a sense of belonging with others that transcends borders. Over time, such experiences diffuse through societies, subtly shifting how Europe is imagined and lived. One could say that Europe has struggled in producing a shared sense of belonging or solidarity, which will always be hard without a single language, religion, symbols, or a founding myth. Though I do not advocate for reducing any of these things down to a single truth, I believe that exchange programs like Erasmus can offer a shared experience of living, growing, studying or working together, which will give us the incentive and longing to live in an even more unified Europe. The process is subtle but enduring. Once empathy is ingrained, it’s not easy to get rid of it. A person who has shared meals, homes, and struggles with peers from other nations will find it harder to reduce those countries to ugly stereotypes. Erasmus thus functions as an advocate against nationalism, though it doesn’t eliminate differences, it teaches coexistence.

What makes Erasmus remarkable is that it operates through life itself, it doesn’t simply formally teach solidarity but encourages it. Knowledge isn’t only gained from books but from participation in diverse communities and an exchange program cultivates openness, mutual respect, intercultural dialogue, and a readiness to cooperate for the common good, all things that some might think of as European values and a product of the Enlightenment. In a time of resurgent nationalism, the socialization of empathy and solidarity may be a surprising but an effective and sustainable path to peace. To see Erasmus as mere educational mobility is to miss its deeper significance. It’s an institutionalized experiment, a systematic attempt to socialize young Europeans into cooperation rather than competition. Through the ordinariness of study abroad, it performs an extraordinary task by teaching people to live together across differences. Every Erasmus exchange, whether a year, semester or week, is a small act of European nation-building, rooted in friendship rather than bureaucracy. Of course, exchange programs cannot replace politics, nor can they erase the structural inequalities that divide the continent. But they do something subtler and perhaps more enduring by keeping alive the idea that co-existence, empathy, friendship, and solidarity is possible between nations, and that cooperation begins not in parliaments, but in the everyday lives of ordinary people.

Programmes like Erasmus remind us that Europe is built through shared experiences as much as through politics. If you believe in that vision, keep the spirit alive and travel, study, host, or simply reach out across borders. Empathy, like Europe itself, survives only through practice.

“Erasmus+ Statistics and Factsheets.” European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA), Erasmus+ Programme. https://erasmus-plus.ec.europa.eu/resources-and-tools/statistics-and-factsheets.

“Impact of Erasmus+ on European Identity and Voting Intentions Among Students.” Academic Cooperation Association (ACA). Published September 2024. https://aca-secretariat.be/newsletter/impact-of-erasmus-on-european-identity-and-voting-intentions-among-students.

McLeod, Saul. “Socialization.” Simply Psychology. Published July 17, 2023. https://www.simplypsychology.org/socialization.html.

“Erasmus+ 2023 Annual Report: Supporting 1.3 Million Participants and 32,000 Projects.” Western Balkans Info Hub. Published June 2024. https://westernbalkans-infohub.eu/documents/erasmus-2023-annual-report-supporting-1-3-million-participants-and-32000-projects.