ABSTRACT
Lithuania, after several decades of usurpation, has been an independent state since 1990. Since 2004, it has also been a member of the EU that at the moment itself is invited by recent events to reflect upon itself and its basic values. No wonder, therefore, that discussion about what it means to be a citizen of the Republic of Lithuania remains ongoing. Politicians sometimes initiate discussion, especially with the elections approaching (the most recent in Lithuania, to Parliament/Seimas, in October, 2016), however, a more systemic and focused discussion is sometimes missing. The first part of the chapter is dedicated to discussing current issues in the country: the Lithuanian situation is characterized by extensive emigration from the country, and, even though the GNP increases, there are issues that pose certain anxiety about the security of the country and its citizens (among others, construction of an atomic plant next to its border and other) sometimes do not receive the necessary voice. The next part of the chapter analyzes situations of young people, and the third offers examples of citizenship education. The last part is dedicated to presenting data of an empiric study, organized and implemented by the team of authors of this book. A study was launched and implemented in 2013. Obviously, the data had to be considered with caution, because the world changed so evidently during that time (2013) and the time of developing this chapter (2015-2016). This fact presents one of the major, if not the main, limitation of the study. This paper presents an overview of some theoretical arguments and presents some of the data from an empiric international study carried out in autumn 2013. The research question addressed in this chapter is what is the engagement of people (in our case: young people) in various aspects of citizenship and if this engagement is related to their age, gender or family status. Object: young people’ declarations on various aspects of the citizenship. Participants: 354 adolescents aged 11?18 years old participated in the study. Methods of critical analysis and a quantitative approach (survey) were employed for the development of the chapter, and a citizenship activity questionnaire was used for the study. Conclusions connecting theoretical analysis and empirical data are presented.
