Our research fellow Kseniia Cherniak recently came back from the field trip to Lithuania.

From May to July Kseniia stayed in Vilnius, Lithuania and conducted 37 interviews with various actors that participate in decision-making and implementation of decisions in the area emigration politics, particularly, with politicians, representatives of trade unions, business networks, government and NGOs. Especially interesting was to find out how actors from so different areas of expertise percept freedom of movement and its influence on the country and its development. In addition to interviews, Kseniia also looked through Lithuanian printed newspapers to collect the data about the dynamics of the discussions regarding emigration and European integration in Lithuanian media of 2000s.

Actuality of the topic of emigration and returned migration also proved itself besides scientific work – Kseniia met a lot of people whose family members or friends moved abroad or who returned to Lithuania after living abroad for several years.

Such field trip observations make the insights from the collected data even more liveable, and we are looking forward to analyse and compare the data from all the countries.