Spain’s young people are among the most highly trained in the European Union. But despite their qualifications, they face many labour market barriers to obtaining gainful employment. The pandemic has had a strong impact in the country, whose shortage of professional opportunities for young postgraduates is increasingly forcing them to take charge of their lives by practicing mobility to work abroad. Drawing from a qualitative study of 50 Spanish postgraduates with previous experiences of mobility, this article contributes to the existing literature on the geography of young people by examining the concept of ‘proactive resilience’ to show how precariousness obliges them to move, in order to escape vulnerability in search of opportunities to improve their professional lives. I argue that proactive resilience is both a part and a product of precariousness and acts as an engine that pushes young postgraduates to practice mobility, depending on their circumstances: (a) proactive resilience to seek opportunities to work abroad according to their level of training; (b) proactive resilience to move with the support of scholarships to continue training, or after passing competitive examinations. The conclusions highlight the contribution of the article, summarizing the analysis and answering the research questions. Proactive resilience has not previously been researched in this manner, and the findings contribute to refining the framework of post-pandemic youth mobility, as well as suggesting new avenues for future research. © The Author(s) 2025. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
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