Perspectives from Lithuania: How Militarization and Free-Market Fundamentalism Compromise the Integration Process

Lithuania’s national security policies have transformed dramatically since the Ukraine Crisis, most notably in its revived conscription law, as well as its reinforced ties with NATO. While strengthening its integration with Western security structures, Lithuania continues to amplify its free-market fundamentalism, best exemplified in its latest labor code. The anthropology of EU integration and Europeanization in post-socialist Eastern Europe has shown that integration processes foster renewed values of independence from Russia and the Soviet past, but also new realities of inequality and insecurity. Anthropologists anticipate an exacerbation of these issues under Brexit and Europe's ongoing migration crisis. Lithuania's labor code intends to boost the economy by favoring employer flexibility over worker’s security, but where housing prices have tripled and renters hold off for international soldiers, the fragility of this situation has forced many Lithuanians to emigrate to the UK and other richer countries for work. Furthermore, while military spending and recruitment increases, Lithuania has since 2016 made dramatic cuts to its refugee integration program, which is already hardly sustainable on its 2020-capped EU funds, nor within a social system based on a labor code that forces its own citizens to emigrate. This paper argues that the relationship between Lithuania's emigration rate and its national security policy is fostering new forms of insecurity that invite toxic nationalisms, which in turn challenges its own ideology of democratic independence. It explains how militarization and free-market fundamentalism fortify a false sense of security that can only operate on destructive methods of exclusion.