Wyjazdy studentów w ramach programu Erasmus jako instytucjonalna forma przedlużonego moratorium. Przyczynek do tezy o „kryzysie cwierćwiecza”

The article presents the issue of 20-year-old students who decide to take part in the Erasmus Programme in order to finish building their own self in a reflective way. It especially applies to students who, despite the age indicating the completion of an identity crisis, remain in an extended moratorium on early adulthood - experience the "quarter-century crisis". The crisis manifests itself in the escape from making commitments assigned to conventionally defined adulthood. While on scholarship, a student functions in three dimensions of cultural borderlands: their native country, host country and cultural pluralism which is favoured by contacts with other international scholarship holders. Facilitating confrontation with "otherness", a borderline promotes cognitive alertness aimed at themselves which is a development impulse. Institutional support for a scholarship holder (scholarships, institutional care of the host university, student community) ensures their safety and facilitates increased exploration of identity. "Otherness", in the Simmel sense, is for a student not only a test of their own powers, but also an opportunity to create their life plans. The analysis was peformed on the basis of the data obtained from participatory observation and in-depth interviews with Polish scholarship holders (N=11) conducted in Porto (in winter semester of 2009/2010).