Participants
Laimas FergizasVilnius University, Lithuania
I was born in 1971 in a provincial town of Lithuania, which happened to be the most western part of the Soviet Union at that time. Though my native language was Lithuanian (totally different from Russian, spoken by nearly 4 m people) while attending the primary school I was obliged to learn Russian, which was lingua franca in the Eastern block at that time.
Being 18 I moved to live on my own in a relatively big city, capital of Lithuania, Vilnius (pop. 600,000). There I succeeded entered into competitive studies of journalism at the Vilnius State University. This move happened to coincide with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and I remember myself staying throughout the nights in the Lithuanian Parliament when it was threatened to be attacked by the Soviet Army troops in January 1991 as a backlash to Lithuania's secession from the Soviet Union. During those eventful days 13 civilians have been killed in Vilnius.
During the studies in the Vilnius University I have switched seriously to a new lingua franca - English. My efforts paid off soon as I have worked successfully freelance as a interpreter and consultant for westerners coming to Lithuania. Prior to that I worked as an official in the freshly created Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Lithuania and later as was employed as a reporter in the Lithuania's biggest national daily Lietuvos Rytas. This was followed by my professional activity as a public relations officer in the think-tank Lithuanian Free Market Institute. Besides this I spent a part of my time acting as a volunteer in the political organisation Liberal Youth, later in the Lithuanian Liberal Party. As a hobby I like hot-air-ballooning and worked as an observer-judge in international ballooning competitions.
Before two years (in 2001) I visited Germany for the German language summer course at the Heidelberg University. In 2003 thanks to the support from the DAAD I fulfilled my dream to live and study in the ultimate Europe's metropolis - Berlin. Currently I am studying for a Master's degree in the Baltic Sea Region Studies at the Humboldt-University.
My experiences of starting new life in new places and in new socio-political environments, as well as multiple short-stays in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Poland, Russia (then the Soviet Union), Germany, France, Austria, Hungary, Slovakia, and Ukraine prompted me to get interested into subject of multiculturalism and refugee migration issues.
Read more about Lithuania and its capital city Vilnius.
To contact me email laimas@gmx.de
Paper: Refugee Migration as Founding Basis of Multiculturalism (Session IV)
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