Since the outbreak of the crisis in Southern Europe, growing numbers of young, highly educated, qualified and skilled Italians, Spaniards, Portuguese and Greeks have been taking their talents and expertise to other countries in search of better funds, better career opportunities and better payoffs. The economic and political crises in these countries, the austerity measures and rampant unemployment rates and the dramatic decreases in salaries and welfare allowances, have pushed young Southern Europeans to «vote with their feet», leaving for other countries or continents. The departure of Southern Europe’s highly educated youth in particular has been described as potentially one of the harshest consequences of the crisis, triggering alarmed public debates as to the medium and long term consequences of this flight of brains at a time where innovation and creativity are critical for these economies to grow again. Young, educated women and men from Southern Europe seem to be between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, Southern EU member states and specifically Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain, are entering their seventh year of financial and economic crisis thereby offering their young citizens a national context characterised by collapsed labour markets, economic recession, sharply rising poverty and inequalities, as well as restricted professional development opportunities. On the other hand, young Europeans from these Southern member states, similarly to most citizens in late modern and post-industrial societies, are confronted with the accelerated anxiety, the existential uncertainty and angst that is associated with our current liquid modernity. In an era of freedom and