Integration and naturalization study in Latvia

Date: Tue, 23 Sep 97 10:55:16 -0500
From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>
Message-Id: <[email protected]>
To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
Subject: Integration and naturalization study in Latvia

From: MINELRES moderator       \ Internet:    ([email protected])

Integration and naturalization study in Latvia

Seconding the recent posting on integration study in Estonia. A similar
project is being implemented now in Latvia. The main reason why it was
launched was very slow naturalization path (some 5,000 naturalizations since
the process has started in February 1995). There are very different views on
why Latvia's resident non-citizens are so reluctant to naturalize, and the
Naturalization Board took an initiative to study the problem seriously. 

Representatives of a series of relevant organizations were invited to create
a working group, including National Human Rights Office, The State  
Language Teaching Program, The Citizenship and Immigration Board, The
President of Latvia's Minority Consultative Council and others, including
several NGOs. The project is funded by several sponsors, among them the
Soros Foundation-Latvia, UNDP, possibly also the OSCE  mission in Latvia.
The working group has formulated main problems to study and identified
proper methods of research. 

So far the first stage of the project is completed. 6 focus group
discussions     have been conducted in August 1997, and the intermediary
report is just published. The groups represented non-citizens (age 19-25, 26
-45, 46-65), citizens (36-50, 20-35), as well as experts - teachers and
language specialists. The aims of the research were the following: to find
out the attitudes by citizens and non-citizens towards issues related to the
formation of civic consciousness; attitudes by citizens and non-citizens
towards naturalization, its course, procedure and requirements; attitudes by
citizens and non-citizens towards the Latvian language as the official
language; to determine major diffculties in the study of the Latvian
language and the motivation for the study of the language. 

At the next stage of the project implementation a broad survey will be
conducted, and on the basis of the output analysis a program to facilitate
integration and civic nation-building is to be prepared. 

The focus group discussions were carried out and the report written by the
Market and Social Research Centre "Baltic Data House", project manager -
Brigita Zepa. 

Thus, we are slightly behind our Estonian colleagues but are following their
pattern :-)  

Boris 
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