Crisis, social trust and migratory exit from Lithuania
C. Woolfson1, A. Juska2 and I. Genelyte3
Paper to
26th Conference of the Nordic Sociological Association, ‘Trust and Social Change’
17 August 2012, University of Iceland, Reykjavik
Session: ‘trust and social capital’ 15:45-17:45 Seminar room HT-104.
DRAFT ONLY. NOT FOR CITATION.
"Our society more closely resembles <a country> afflicted by disintegrating 18th century
feudalism than an evolving liberal society." Krescencijus Stoškus (2011).
Introduction
Lithuania is a post-communist country which has been severely impacted by economic crisis
since 2008, significantly deeper in the Baltic countries in global terms than even current
downturns in the Eurozone peripheral countries. It has triggered sharp increases in
unemployment, massive salary cuts especially in the public sector, and the imposition of harsh
austerity measures implemented by government, focused on curtailing welfare provision by
reductions in pensions and social benefits.
Lithuanian society has also experienced an attendant erosion of the ‘social fabric’ manifested in a
number of ways. Most striking has been a significant “exit” of the population accompanying the
economic crisis. Within just two years – 2010 and 2011 – around 150 thousand people emigrated
from the country. Over the course of the previous decade some 600,000 persons emigrated.
1
Professor of labour studies, Institute for Research on Migration, Ethnicity and Society (REMESO), Linköping
University, Campus Norrköping, Sweden. Email: charles.woolfson@liu.se
2
Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC, USA. Email:
juskaa@ecu.edu
3
PhD Candidate in Ethnicity and Migration, , Institute for Research on Migration, Ethnicity and Society
(REMESO), Linköping University, Campus Norrköping, Sweden. Email: indre.genelyte@liu.se
1
Today the population is just over three million. However, this paper suggests that while
economic motives may have previously been the primary driver of emigration, the impact of
current crisis has led to a new kind of migration driven by a deeper social disenchantment with
the current socio-political arrangements of post-communist society, raising questions concerning
its longer-term social and economic sustainability. It is a shift increasingly recognized in
emergent public discourse and to some extent reflected in statistical data including the European
Social Survey (ESS 4.0), Eurostat data and recent surveys on national level. The paper
accordingly argues that Lithuania today is experiencing crisis-induced erosion in the
relationships between individuals, society and the state, amounting to a social and political
“disenfranchisement.”
How has this state of affairs come about? Can it really be said that recent flows of migration
represent a migration that is qualitatively new? The contention of this paper is that the mass
“exodus” of the population is not a simple reflection of either rising unemployment, far less of
administrative changes in the registration system for those leaving the country. It goes beyond a
simple response to economic adversity and signifies a deeper crisis-induced rejection by a
significant proportion of the population of the very society into which they have been socialized.
In order to grasp the full impacts of this crisis, the changing relationships between individual,
society and the state are examined. It is argued that policies of austerity adopted by the
Lithuanian government in response to global economic and financial crisis and the bursting of
the housing bubble in 2008, have re-confirmed underlying significant changes in prevailing
interpretations of the social compact between the state and society, between individuals and the
wider polity.
Some theoretical considerations
Arguably those scholars who have examined social trust and distrust those who have done so in
the context of post-communist society have had a particularly keen theoretical edge (Kornai,
Rothstein, Rose-Ackerman, 2004; Markova, 2004). A common theme is the identification of the
erosion of both “interpersonal” and “generalized trust” in formerly socialist societies and the
attendant difficulty of generating trust in the new social and political arrangements put in place
following the collapse of communism. The absence of, or at least continuing low level of trust in
2
the new democratic set-up is viewed as an unanticipated and unwelcome accompaniment of
rapid and tumultuous transition to the free market (Stompka, 1993; 1996; 1999: 174-79).
Nevertheless, the concept of trust has on the whole been framed within an optimistic purview in
which distrust will be overcome as the institutions and practices of liberal democracy become
embedded in society. Yet neither the history of transition nor the ambiguous legacy of the
previous era suggests that such an outcome is either likely or even possible.
The process of transition created at the same time the deep “social shock” of mass
unemployment, inflation, new poverty, corruption, the absence of due process and
accountability, flawed privatization, growing organized crime and personal insecurity on a scale
that was simply not conceivable for most of the citizens of these once stable, if somewhat
authoritarian socialist social systems (Berend, 2007). That said, in the socialist era, trust in others
was often personalized, confined largely to the intimate circle of the family and work colleagues
and often matched by a pervasive distrust of the agencies and institutions of the ruling party and
its regime. Nevertheless, “actually-existing socialism” offered educational opportunities to the
young, a guaranteed job if not always matching individual desires, a place to live and at the end
of working life, a state retirement pension if only modest. In establishing the new social and
political order in which these “gains” were quickly sacrificed on the altar of market principles
and individual responsibility, and in the “grand sorting out” into “winners and losers” which
subsequently took place, arguably social trust, in both a generalized and personalized sense was
dissolved in the implosion of an individualism, crafted not so much by an ideological embracing
of the new order, but by the needs of survival in desperately uncertain times. The hardships and
disappointments of the transition period stood in sharp contrast to exaggerated expectations of a
brave new future the populace had been led to believe would accompany the new social system.
The initial rationale during the transition years may be summed up as that of a “necessary
temporary sacrifice” to clear out the negative inheritance of the previous system, in order to
make way for a more democratic future. In reality, this official narrative very quickly gave way
to an increasing social pessimism and pervasive social alienation. Within a few years of the shift
to the free market, public opinion polls across Eastern Europe recorded widespread and growing
disenchantment with the unrealized material benefits of the new democracies and disengagement
from the new democratic institutions.
3
It is the key contention of this paper, the dialectic of trust/distrust in post-communist society has
undergone a further qualitative transformation in the current global economic and financial
crisis. The crisis has produced a new “social shock” on a scale which in many respects
outmatches that of the early years of transition. For post-soviet states such as Lithuania, forged
around a unified ideology of ethno-nationalism, it has marked a turning point, the “end of the
post-communist dream” and a final punctuation point on whatever illusions of a progressive or
socially just future might have existed under the new order of capitalism. The global financial
and economic crisis, as experienced in Eastern European countries such as Lithuania represents
not so much a crisis of capitalism, but a crisis of post-communism.
Theoretically, we acknowledge seminal insights of Hirschman’s classic exit/voice/loyalty
equation, especially as applied among others by W. Rogers Brubaker (1990) and latterly by
Hirschman himself (1993) to the study of out-migration in post-communist societies. We
examine the impact of crisis in terms of a qualitative shift in the relations between individuals
and society and individuals ant the state. We suggest that the conventional notions of “distrust”
are not adequate to grasp the tipping point which this represents in the development of postcommunist society. Instead, the notion of “social disenfranchisement”’ is proposed, as an active
‘dis-location’ of the individual from the social fabric of society, manifest in the final dissipation
of both political and industrial citizenship. To explore this contention further we focus on one
paradigmatic neo-liberal post-communist society, the former Baltic Soviet republic of Lithuania
and the contemporary massive out-migration of its population.
Economic crisis, inequalities and unrest
The economic crisis from 2008 onwards produced a transformative social shock, even more so,
as it contrasted with several boom years between 2004 and 2007 in which economic growth at
around 7% of GDP per annum was among the highest in the European Union. During the socalled “fat years” the Lithuanian population had come to believe in the miracle of a “tiger
economy” with vistas of unending prosperity in an “open” neo-liberal economy (Bohle and
Greskovits 2007). At one stage in 2007, property prices per square metre in the capital city of
Vilnius exceeded those in Stockholm. The rapid growth that produced this prosperity bubble
brought with it significant social inequalities and social costs. Social inequalities in terms of
4
income were increasingly pronounced in this embedded neo-liberal market economy which
offered its citizens only the most rudimentary levels of social protection (Figures 1 and 2).
Figure 1. Gini coefficient (2009)
Finland
Sweden
United Kingdom
United Kingdom
Slovakia
Spain
Sweden
Slovenia
Romania
Portugal
Poland
Austria
Netherlands
Malta
Hungary
Luxembourg
Latvia
Cyprus
Italy
France
Spain
Greece
Ireland
Estonia
Germany
Denmark
Czech Republic
Bulgaria
Belgium
Lithuania
35.5
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
Source: Eurostat
Figure 2. Level of total expenditure on social protection as a % of GDP (2008)
35
30
25
20
15.70
15
10
5
Slovenia
Slovakia
Romania
Portugal
Poland
Netherlands
Malta
Luxembourg
Lithuania
Latvia
Italy
Ireland
Hungary
Greece
Germany
France
Finland
Estonia
Denmark
Czech Republic
Cyprus
Bulgaria
Belgium
Austria
0
Source: Eurostat
Lithuania, on the eve of crisis therefore was already a society of deep underlying social
inequalities and tensions. As the global economic crisis engulfed Lithuania, and the housing
bubble burst, the economy entered a free-fall that made the impact of recession in the Baltic
5
region among the most severe of the EU countries (and arguably in the world). Between the
second quarter of 2008 and 2009, real wages in Lithuania declined more steeply than any other
EU country (Figure 3).
Figure 3. Year on year percentage real change in wages and salaries (2Q 2008- 2Q 2009)
Unemployment, although falling overall slightly in most recent periods, rose during the crisis to
among the highest levels in the EU27 compared to the EU average of 9.7% in September 2011,
exceeded only by Greece (17.6%) and Spain (22.6%) (seasonally adjusted figures). However,
long-term unemployment continued to grow (Figure 4).
Figure 4. Unemployment rate (percentage of active population)
20%
18%
Of active population
16%
17.8%
17.4%
15.4%
13.8%
14%
10%
13.7%
11.4%
12%
Unemployment
8.3%
9.3%
7.4%
8%
4.3%
6%
4%
2%
8%
5.8%
Long-term
unemployment
5.58%
3.2%
4.3%
1.2%
0%
2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011
Source: Statistics Lithuania, Eurostat 2011
6
In response to the economic crisis, Baltic governments introduced radical austerity measures, a
so-called “internal devaluation” which included steep wage and social benefit reductions, cuts in
public expenditure and an extensive re-writing of protective labour legislation. Such radical
austerity measures were imposed mainly without popular or democratic consultation with
representative bodies such as trade unions, small business representatives or organizations
speaking for selected vulnerable groups such as students and pensioners. The result was
unprecedented mass protests on the streets both in Latvia and in Lithuania which in January 2009
ended in rioting in the capital city and ongoing protests up and down the country (Mullett 2009,
Thomas 2010).
The failure of “voice”
As with many other post-communist societies, Lithuania has seen strikes, protest demonstrations,
blockades, prolonged public fastings. However, social disorder on this scale had never before
been seen in the post-socialist period and in a fundamental respect was a turning point in the
development of the country since its independence from the Soviet Union. Social unrest was a
deep jolt to the complacency of the ruling authorities who had relied on the famed “passiveness”
of the Lithuanian population. For the government of the day, only organized conspiracy on the
part of “Lithuania’s enemies” could explain the scale and intensity of the disorder which saw
hundreds arrested and tear-gas and rubber bullets used against demonstrators outside the
“Seimas” (parliament). Yet beyond conspiracy theories which largely failed to gather popular
traction, there emerged a new set of discourses, entirely incompatible with the previous
assumptions of a unified nation liberated from the yoke of Soviet oppression. The material nature
of this discourse, i.e., relations among language, ideology and class position highlights
understanding of discourse and language as the key to an interpretation and understanding of
social struggle (Hall 1997; Voloshinov 1973). For the first time, official narratives of a free,
socially just and democratic Lithuanian citizenship were thrown into question by a marked shift
towards authoritarian state responses and the suppression of further public manifestations of
dissent (Juska and Woolfson 2012a).
The anti-austerity protests in 2009 were marked by unprecedented popular demands for “social
justice.” These demands were for social justice for the “tauta” (the ordinary “people”) and/or for
7
respect for the dignity of individuals who felt they were literally “swindled” in broad daylight by
the government that they had elected and abused by the “valdininkiai” (the state bureaucrats)
who presided over the state system. Yet in the media, those who protested the current state of
Lithuania were described more in terms of participating in a spontaneous burst of popular fury,
but not as representatives of organized or communal interests (such as labour unions) with
legitimate demands and grievances to be addressed by the authorities. Rather they were depicted
as representatives of disparate social-demographic categories such as pensioners (especially
elderly ladies throwing stones at the “Seimas” could be considered as the epitome of the wrath of
the “tauta”, the nation in its righteousness), or at best as fragmented sectional groups such as
small business owners, students, workers, and unemployed without common demands. The
recognition that there was legitimacy to the protesters’ grievances was at best oblique. What was
clearly a new turn of events and a new kind of popular unrest in Lithuania found only a partial
discourse to describe its full resonance with long-standing but unrealised claims for social justice
(Balockaite 2009). Yet beneath official narratives, a second or ‘hidden transcript’
unacknowledged in the official discourse has emerged which has powerfully critiqued the
prevailing systemic social inequalities of Lithuanian society (Matonyte 2006).
Social injustice in Lithuania is seen as a twofold phenomenon. On the one hand, there is the
perception of “nepotism” or the “protection of favoured individuals”. This phenomenon is rooted
not only in the private, but in the public sector as well. Nepotism prevents individuals from
having a perspective of career advancement based on merit or personal worth, if they do not have
informal network of “important persons”. This especially it harms the careers of young welleducated and high skilled individuals (Udrenas 2011). On the other hand, social injustice is
perceived due to the different rights and double standards applied with respect to different social
groups. The elite in Lithuania is seen as the privileged group, in particular, businessmen and
politicians and other high officials. The sharpest criticisms are devoted to the latter. According to
one author, “it is hard to expect that businessmen will share their profits”, but representatives of
the government should be more concerned about the nation than about the private interests”
(Stoskus 2011). The new and explicit discourse of “them” and “us” is indicative of a growing
erosion of trust between classes supposedly formerly “united’ in society and speaks to a wider
rupture of previous assumptions and attitudes.
8
Utilising survey data from the Fourth European Social Values Survey carried out in the first part
of 2009, just as the crisis was beginning to peak, allows these developments to be placed in a
wider although incomplete context in terms of capturing the dynamic evolution of the
problematic of “social disenfranchisement.” They address only the more traditional measures of
trust and distrust. For heuristic purposes, we compare Lithuania (as a “low-trust” postcommunist society) with Sweden (a representing a “high-trust” Nordic/Scandinavian social
democracy) recognising that the latter represents an ideal type. Figure 5 offers an insight into the
differing character of interpersonal relations along a number of measures of social distance.
Three indicators are composited along an eleven-point scale: ‘Most people can be trusted or you
can't be too careful’; ‘Most people try to take advantage of you, or try to be fair’; ‘Most of the
time people helpful or mostly looking out for themselves’. The shaded area to the left of the
median line (the mid-point between ‘extreme distrust’ and ‘extreme trust’ of other people)
indicates the much greater social distance in Lithuania as compared to Sweden, and the
correlative much higher level of expressed social trust in other people in Sweden as compared to
Lithuania.
Figure 5. Social distance indicators (Lithuania and Sweden compared)
Source: European Social Survey (ESS4), 2009.
9
Even greater disparities between Lithuania and Sweden when it comes to trust in political
institutions of society. Four key scalar indicators are presented: ‘Trust in the country’s
parliament’; ‘Trust in the country’s legal system’; ‘Trust in politicians’; ‘Trust in political
parties’. Although there is some mistrust in Sweden with respect to political institutions
(revealed by the non-shaded area to the left of the median line), overall the two countries present
a polar opposite low trust/high trust ‘mirror image’ displayed by the shaded areas each side of
the median (Figure 6).
Figure 6. Trust in political institutions (Lithuania and Sweden compared)
Source: European Social Survey (ESS4), 2009.
A contrastive mirror-image picture is revealed when it comes to satisfaction with the democratic
system when comparing Lithuania and Sweden, although in terms of dissatisfaction for Sweden
the scores are quite minimal. As above, the shaded areas to the left and right of the median line
suggest a stark attitudinal contrast between these two countries.
10
Figure 7. How satisfied with the way democracy works in country (Lithuania and Sweden
compared)
Source: European Social Survey (ESS4), 2009
Low levels of trust in politicians, political institutions of democracy and the state are mirrored in
overwhelmingly negative evaluations of current Lithuanian society in general. A representative
survey conducted in December 2010 through to January 2011 found that 80% of respondents
were of the opinion that they are living in “a patently socially unjust society” where the affluent
elite dominated the rest of the population possessing significantly lower standards of living,
while an insignificant middle class was sandwiched in between. According to this survey,
perceptions of inequalities and powerlessness seemed to be pervasive among the workforce as
well. Forty-one percent of respondents considered that employers wielded unchecked and
excessive power over their employees, compounding general perceptions of social and economic
insecurity. The survey also revealed in line with previous data on social trust in general that only
14% of 15-24 years age group said that “one can trust other people”; among 60 years and older
the proportion of those trusting others was the highest – 20%; 38% of all respondents said that
they were afraid about “being abused by others” were they to find themselves in a vulnerable
situation (Jursyte 2011).
11
Popular contributions to online media discussion websites also suggest just how sharp the new
critique of perceived social injustice has become. A review of analytic contributions from a
variety of commentators reveals the prevalence of new discourses on ‘social serfdom’, ‘social
disenfranchisement’ representing a moral and ethical critique of the bureaucratic ruling classes or
“valdininkija” who along with their business allies, act as faceless and uncaring with regard to
the ordinary people of Lithuania (Juska and Woolfson 2012b). The framing of such narratives in
terms of seemingly archaic terms such as “social serfdom” and “social disenfranchisement”
indicates an deep subversion of the social contract between the state and the people, expressed as
the humiliating dependency and the helplessness of citizens when dealing with state officials
seen as masters of obstructionism in the issuing official papers; condescending in their attitude
towards ordinary people. In turn, this has strengthened a widespread perception that most
important matters can only be resolved through friends and acquaintances rather than through
official channels; propagating a general sense of pervasive social uncertainty and vulnerability,
and a deep mistrust of employers, courts, and state institutions and indeed of authority in general
(Markeviciene 2010). There is “hostility” between the nation and the authorities (Ozelyte 2011),
the officials who have “occupied” (Sepetys 2011) the state and for whom the nation is needed as
a passive instrument only during the elections, but as a nation it does not and indeed is not
permitted, to participate in active governing (Sakalas 2011).
Voter turnout in elections also provides a measure just how deeply embedded political alienation
has become. Very low levels of trust in the “Seimas” and the government are reflected in
growing levels of voter apathy especially when compared with high levels of voter participation
in national elections during the 1990s. Thus, in 1993 and 1997 presidential elections threequarters of eligible voters cast their votes. By the early 2000s, voter participation had decreased
significantly to about 52% in 2004 and 2009 (see The Central Electoral Commission of the
Republic of Lithuania at http://www.vrk.lt/en/ ). Over the last decade (2001-2011; N=1,000)
annual representative surveys have also been conducted within Lithuania on perceptions of the
general public concerning the quality of services provided by and trust in state institutions
(Gaidys 2011). The legislative and executive branches of the government were especially
12
negatively evaluated.4 More specifically, the proportion of those who trust the “Seimas”
decreased from 14% in 2001 to 6% in 2011, while those who distrust the parliament increased
from 54% in 2001 to 79% in 2011. Corresponding numbers of those trusting government
declined from 23% in 2001 to 15% in 2011, and increased from 38% to 58% for those declaring
distrust. Equally, in a 2009 survey about a third of respondents failed to identify even one state
institution (national or local) in which they had trust (Baltijos Tyrimai 2010, 7; Vilmorus 2009,
13; 20). By 2011, only 15% of respondents held the opinion that their voice counted in
Lithuania, the lowest among EU countries (Gaidys 2011). In another survey in 2011, 82% of
respondents claimed that politicians were in politics for personal gain only and only 6% were of
the opinion that while in office politicians act in a just manner (Samoskaite 2011b). As the crisis
of 2008 and 2009 developed, Eurobarometer data confirmed a sharp downturn in general
optimism concerning the direction of development of the country.
Figure 8. At the present time, would you say that things are going in the right direction or
in the wrong direction in your country? (percentage of positive answers)
60%
53%
50%
42%
40%
Estonia
Latvia
30%
Lithuania
20%
10%
10%
Sweden
7%
0%
2006
2007
2008
2009
Source: Vihalemm (2011)
4
The exception in this respect were increasing positive evaluations and the trust of the presidency over
the last few years, reflective of the hopes associated with the election of a popular new president of the
country in 2009. Thus the proportion of those trusting presidency increased from 53% in 2006 to 67% in
2010, while those whom distrusted the presidency declined from 35% to 21% correspondingly (Baltijos
Tyrimai 2010, 7; Vilmorus 2009, 18). However, the presidency in Lithuania, which is parliamentary
republic, is primarily a ceremonial office with authority extending mostly to foreign affairs.
13
These indicators of heightened level of general pessimism in Lithuanian society and expectations
for the future, are of course no more than what might be expected given the gravity of the
economic crisis. However, taken together with the array of survey evidence presented here of
eroded support for political institutions and processes, of an absence of trust in the institutional
of society and the polity, and of widespread perceptions of a lack of social justice, our key
contention is that the impact of the economic crisis, in the absence of a cushion of social
solidarities to absorb the shock of severe downturn, has delivered something of a “finishing
blow” to the socio-political and ideological project of post-communism. The outcome of lack of
“voice” is “exit” on a massive scale. What is new however, is the previously neglected driver
which Hirschman (1970) identified in his classic work, “loyalty” or more precisely, the
disintegration of residual loyalties in the context of impaired citizenship in neo-liberal postcommunist society.
Migration from Lithuania
We can distinguish several ‘waves’ of outmigration from Lithuania. The first wave was of the
migrants who left Lithuania in the years following political independence from the USSR.
Substantial numbers of these were Russian-speaking citizens who migrated Eastwards in the
early 1990s. This then was largely a ‘repatriation’ migration occasioned by ‘voluntary’ outmigration of those who did not represent, or had no stake in the new titular ethnic elites which
substituted formerly dominant Russian-speaking nomenklatura. The second wave comprised
those who sought economic and material improvement abroad, mainly in the West, in the years
up to the 2004 integration of Lithuania in the European Union. Much of this migration was
‘illegal’ or undocumented.
With EU membership, came free movement of labour, at first limited to Ireland, UK and
Sweden. It was one of the important new rights that EU membership bestowed on the Lithuanian
population, the freedom to travel and seek work wherever. Many of these were ‘temporary’
migrants who anticipated a return home after a period of high earning abroad. Of course, there is
nothing more permanent than temporary and many did not return. However, this was a classical
economic migration within the framework of new mobility opportunities brought about by EU
enlargement.
14
The third wave, which is the subject of this paper, has been occasioned by the contemporary
global economic and financial crisis since 2008. As economic crisis intensified unemployment
grew from a relative low level of 4.1% in 2007 to 18.3% in the second quarter of 2010 with a
concomitant increase in emigration from 26.6 thousand in 2007 to 83.2 thousand in 2010
(Statistikos Departamentas 2011). This was the highest level of emigration since 1945 and
comparable only with scope of depopulation of the country during World War II. Since the
restoration of independence in 1990, out of a population of some 3.7 million, 497 thousand had
left the country; three fourths were younger persons (up to 35 years old), many of them educated
and with jobs in Lithuania. By 2008 the emigration rate from Lithuania was the highest among
the EU countries (2.3 per 1,000), and double that of next highest county - Latvia (1.1 per 1,000)
(Statistikos Departamentas 2009: 7). However staggering these numbers for such a small
country, there were substantial grounds for speculation that actual number of people who have
left the country was even higher as official statistics substantially undercounted migration flows.
A better accounting of migration by state agencies (following introduction of mandatory health
insurance fees for those not declaring departure), gave an increase of six times over the previous
year of those officially registered as leaving. Since 2010 was the second year of economic crisis,
the scale of previous underestimates can perhaps be better calibrated to around 150,000 persons
who had departed officially and perhaps many more unofficially. To put these figures in a global
context, currently about 1 in 7 Lithuanians are living abroad; in comparison only about 1 in 10
Mexicans are living in the US.
Add to this out-migration an overall negative rate of population growth. Demographers
previously proved to be too optimistic in their forecasts (the latest were issued in 2010) and had
overestimated the size of Lithuanian population by about 200,000. Instead of forecasted 3.24
million, the census found that by 2011, Lithuania’s population was only just over 3 million
(3.054 m) (Saukiene 2011a; Statistics Lithuania 2011). Taken together with general negative
population growth and declining birth rates, forecasts for the period 2008-2035 suggest a further
population decline of 10.9% for Lithuania, one of the highest rates in the EU (following Bulgaria
and Latvia) (Eurostat 2008).
15
Figure 9. Declared and undeclared emigration Lithuania 2001-2011
Source: Statistics Lithuania
The statistics of migration have of themselves become a point of contention in this debate. On
the popular Lithuanian news website (Delfi.lt) some contributors have suggested that the scale of
emigration may not be accurately revealed (as people seek to avoid social insurance obligations
by declarations of “false” departure). Moreover, some have even claimed that the census itself
was not transparent or accurate. Demography and ‘national identity’ have become intertwined in
public consciousness in quite a new way. One political commentator has suggested that census
was a waste of money (Valatka 2011). Another politician has tried to estimate the “real” extent
of emigration, based on the local Swedish-owned SEB Bank’s information concerning
remittances sent home by Lithuanian emigrants (Navickis 2011). According to this latter view,
the results of the census were “strained” in order to have a number just reaching the 3 million
16
mark and that the decline of population due to emigration is even higher than previous estimates
(Jancoriene 2011). The symbolic significance of the “three million” mark suggests that there are
deeper currents in this new national debate on migration which touch fundamental dimensions of
social and political vulnerability in a time of social and economic crisis.
This intensified emigration is not simply a matter of quantity however. It also has a qualitative
aspect. Data from the Lithuanian Statistics Department show that in last few years, particularly
since the beginning of economic crisis, more women and youth have tended to emigrate.
Educated people are leaving the country and entering a low-skilled labour market in Nordic
countries. Furthermore, the number of children (under 18) emigrating is increasing. This is
leading to another new trend – permanent “family-based” emigration. Thus it is no longer
exclusively a matter of “transnational” individuals leaving for a time-framed opportunity to earn
money and send back remittances to families remaining in Lithuania, but of whole families
exiting to other countries together with their children.
Figure10. Emigration by age group (2011)
25%
21.8%
21.0%
20%
15%
12.7%
10.5%
10%
8.6%
7.1%
6.5%
5%
0%
0-14
15-19
20-24
25-29
30-34
35-39
40-44
Source: Statistics Lithuania
This “permanent” out-migration is also becoming more common among young people.
According to one authoritative national survey, more than one fifth (23%) of young persons,
17
aged 15-22 years, “do not see a future for themselves or their children in Lithuania” (Lauristin,
Vihalemm 2011). The proportion of total emigrants declaring departure in 2011 comprised by
the age group of 20-29 years (21%) represented almost three times their proportion of the total
population (7%) (Statistics Lithuania). A migration on this scale throws into contention the
future sustainability of any possible economic recovery in the short term, but more importantly
of national viability in terms of human resources in the longer term.
Conclusion
For the first time in the post-communist era, a widespread public debate on the identity of
Lithuania as a viable socio-political entity has ensued. Migration as an issue has polarised
societal attitudes between those who are seen to have “betrayed Lithuania” by emigrating, and
those who have remained as the “true Lithuanians” ready to “tough it out.” The spectre of rapid
depopulation exacerbated by deep economic recession has conjured metaphors of hopelessness
and despair among commentators. For some, the emigration from Lithuania is characterized as
turning into evacuation of Lithuania; parallels have been made between the historically high
rates of suicide in Lithuania (among the highest in the world) and massive emigration from the
country, both being interpreted as forms of ‘self-destruction’ of the nation (Kukulas 2010); still
others have lamented that even during the darkest years of Stalin’s terror and deportations, the
population had not declined as steeply as it has done in the years from 2008 to 2010.
This preliminary analysis of contemporary Lithuanian emigration suggests that previously
exclusively economic motivations are now increasingly supplanted by new migration drivers
rooted in “social disenfranchisement” that goes beyond commonly understood notions of social
trust and distrust. Only by exploring these new socio-psychological drivers to migration in terms
of a changed social consciousness and the tensions within this complex and emerging
configuration of social understandings, can the scale and intensity, as well as the altered
character of the outward migratory movement be explained. A transformational moment has
occurred in post-communist Lithuania in which a new discourse has emerged infusing a
qualitatively new dimension to emigration from Lithuania. We have attempted to theorize “social
disenfranchisement” in terms of discourses on powerlessness and alienation that characterize
contemporary Lithuanian society. We suggested that this is a notion that is with increasing
frequency used in various forms of media, especially in discussions and explanations of what
18
seems is ever-growing emigration from the country. The prevalence of this notion and its other
derivatives such as “social serfdom,” especially increased following the onset of the deep fiscal
and economic crisis of 2008. In its sociological interpretation our notion of “social
disenfranchisement” is closely related to Marxian notion of alienation - estrangement from
society, the state, and each other, feelings of powerlessness and domination in conditions of
(formally) functioning democracy and presence of all (formal) legal rights (Mészáros 2005).
From this perspective, social disenfranchisement is a discourse on subversion of substantial
democracy by the formal one, leaving citizens powerless, alienated and without meaningful
participation and voice in politics, economy and civil life when either unaccountable
“valdininkija” (state functionaries and politicians) and/or “oligarchs” co-opt the state and its
institutions (Seimas, courts, etc.) in the service of their private/personal interests.
The alternative to legitimized “voice” and substantive as against formal democratic participation
is the silent migratory exit of the disillusioned and disenfranchised. Contemporary Lithuanian
migration speaks to fundamentals of systemic socio-political failure; the denial of democratic
voice, the dissipation of social trust, the dissolving of solidarities, the atrophy of remaining
reserves of social resilience and above all, the social and economic failure of a post-soviet
experiment in extreme neo-liberal free market reconstruction. Lithuania is a society in disintegration in which economic crisis and austerity, and the responses of the state to this
conjuncture, has unravelled vestigial social solidarities. A tipping point has been reached for a
population now themselves increasingly dis-located within polity and society, distanced from the
united and optimistic ethno-national project of yesteryear. In this respect the “new” migration
from Baltic Lithuania represents not a migration driven by simple “economic determinism”, but
a critique and rejection of the existing society, and perhaps an attempt to realize through “exit”
unfulfilled egalitarian and democratic aspirations towards “voice” currently denied. As one
emigrant remarked: “Our suitcases are our protest placards.”
Acknowledgements
This paper is based on ongoing research funded by the Swedish Council for Working Life and
Research (FAS) Project Number: 2011-0338, Svensk modell och baltisk rörlighet: harmonisering
eller social dumpning? En studie av arbetsmigration mellan Baltikum och Sverige. The Swedish
Institute, Visby programme grant 00749/2010 ‘East-West labour migration, industrial relations
19
and labour standards in a Swedish-Baltic context’ and the Swedish Sociological Association also
provided mobility support to Indre Genelyte.
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