Ecuadorian youth, social and geographic mobility and higher education in Spain and Ecuador. Unequal educational trajectories in times of crises

Resumen

The article analyzes the unequal university trajectories of young Ecuadorians in Spain and Ecuador during the crisis focusing on their mobility strategies in relation to public policies. We examine the trajectories of three groups: sons and daughters of the 2000 migration wave from Ecuador to Spain who access Spanish universities, those who have returned to study in Ecuador, and those who carry out postgraduate studies funded by the Ecuadorian government. The research employs a qualitative methodology based on interviews, focus groups and a survey with candidates who took the exam for admitance into Ecuador's public universities. The frst group must downgrade their expectations in order to continue their studies. Their experience contrasts starkly with Ecuadorians undertaking postgraduate studies in Spain, whose heterogenous trajectories are upwardly and geographically mobile. The case of the returned students shows a broader strategy that depends on transnational networks shaped over more than a decade of Ecuador-Spain migration.