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Enhancing language education in cross-border vocational education

Examples of
border regions

Cross-border vocational education

Plurilingualism

Intercultural competences

Languages, disciplines and professions

Greater Region – Germany-Denmark – Poland-Czech Republic – Lithuania-Poland-Latvia

Lithuania - Poland - Latvia

The border region at a glance

Lithuania has four borders with Latvia, Belarus, Poland and Russia. The borders shared with Latvia and Poland are friendly (see glossary for definitions of hostile and friendly borders), those shared with Belarus and Russia have become hostile in recent years. In the following study focuses on Lithuania and its borders with Latvia and Poland.
Lithuania has approximately 2.7 million inhabitants (2023).
official languages: Lithuanian, Polish, Latvian

Language situation

There is no official statistical information available on the daily number of commuters crossing borders between Lithuania and Poland or Lithuania and Latvia. According to Eurostat (2021), regional commuting among employed Lithuanians aged 15 to 64 is common (11%), whereas cross-border commuting is rare.
Claimed nationalities in the Lithuanian border region are: Lithuanian (86.4%), Polish (5.7%), Russian (4.5%), Belarusian (1.5%), Ukrainian (1%), and other nationalities (0.4%). Nonetheless, 96% of inhabitants claimed Lithuanian to be their native language and 4% claimed they were bilingual (Official Statistics Portal, 2019).
The latest thorough linguistic analysis by the Research Council of Lithuania (2013) revealed that 35% of Lithuanians claim to know Polish. At the same time, the participants of the study claimed that learning or knowing Latvian was not important to them. See the references for more information on linguistic distribution and language policies.

Bibliography

References in English

Eurostat (2021). Commuting between regions.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/ddn-20210610-1
Official Statistics Portal (2019). ‘Lithuanian inhabitants 2019 edition. Inhabitants in numbers and distribution’. In Lithuanian language :
https://osp.stat.gov.lt/documents/..-778223a6e3f6
Research Council of Lithuania. (2013). ‘Languages in Lithuanian Cities. Sociolinguistic map’. Retrieved from http://www.kalbuzemelapis.flf.vu.lt/
State Commission of Lithuanian Language. (2003-2020).’State Language Policy Guidelines 2018–2022’. Retrieved from http://www.vlkk.lt/en
Worldometers (2023). Lithuania Population 2023 (Live). Dover, Delaware, U.S.A. https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/lithuania-population

Annotated bibliography

Examples of pre-existing good practices

Projects:

Interreg V-A - Lithuania-Poland (2012-2020)
Better cross-border emergency services for Lithuania and Poland (01/2010 - 10/2012)
Formation of methodological framework of regional business growth promotion (2007-2013)

Contacts in this project

Vaida Misevičiūtė
vaida.miseviciute

vdu.lt