| Abstract [eng] |
In recent decades, the number of immigrants coming to Lithuania has grown significantly, which has led to greater cultural diversity in Lithuanian cities, especially in the capital Vilnius. The largest group of immigrants in Lithuania – labor immigrants, a large proportion of whom come from Central Asian countries, such as Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. The cultures of these countries significantly differ from Lithuanian culture, which in turn complicates the strategically important process of immigrant adaptation. Lithuania's strategic objective to develop a system for the integration of foreign nationals justifies the relevance of the topic and highlights the need to analyze the experiences of immigrants living in Lithuania and the processes occurring during the interweaving of different cultures. One of the most important processes of intercultural interaction is communication, which can become difficult due to various intercultural communication barriers. An exploratory qualitative study was conducted (both survey questionnaire for collecting data from Central Asian labor immigrants living in Vilnius and semi-structured in-depth interviews with experts from migration and integration organizations operating in Vilnius) to determine the challenges of intercultural communication encountered by Central Asian labor immigrants living in Vilnius, and to explore how these challenges complicate their adaptation in Vilnius. The results of the study reveal the issues related to the adaptation of these immigrants – the insufficient involvement in the local Lithuanian society and the deficiency in communication with local Lithuanians. The study findings indicate that this is influenced not only by the purpose of immigration, the influence of immigrant ethnic communities and the unfavorable attitude of Lithuanian society towards immigrants, but also by the lack of knowledge of the Lithuanian language of these immigrants and the great cultural distance between the cultures of Lithuania and Central Asia. The results of the study reveal that the knowledge of Russian language often helps these immigrants meet only basic needs in everyday situations and limits the opportunities to build closer relationships with Lithuanians and get involved in local communities. In addition, communication between Central Asian labor immigrants and Lithuanians is strongly affected by cultural differences, and most of all by the different level of uncertainty avoidance in both cultures and the intercultural communication barriers related to this cultural dimension: 1) differences in the concept of time and planning; 2) differing attitudes towards uncertainty, risk, and rule compliance; 3) differing perceptions of the expression of personal opinions and criticism; 4) differential communication openness; and 5) differences in communication styles (direct and indirect communication norms). These intercultural communication barriers mainly reduce the self-confidence of Central Asian labor immigrants when communicating with Lithuanians and prevent them from establishing closer relations with Lithuanian people. |
