This Occasional Paper, prepared by Prof Ronald Sultana for iCeGS, UK, in 2008, assesses the dynamics of international policy learning (policy lending and policy borrowing), its possible motives, and key mechanisms by which transfers of learning take place. It raises questions regarding the value and limitations of deterritorialised policy exchange, noting that career guidance practice is firmly rooted in a particular complex of values and meanings that are entwined in the social and economic environment of each country and region.

The author draws on his work experiences in Malta, Palestine and Egypt, to illustrate the way transnational and globalised agendas are reconfigured and reinterpreted at the local level.