Emotional state and inequality among Lithuanian emigrants

Recent public polls have revealed that 56.7 percent of Lithuanian emigrants (N=1500) feel superfluous in their homeland. Many of them are not only disappointed with the country and therefore decide to leave, but also can find neither adequate emotional relations with their homeland afterwards nor maintain healthy emotional ties with fellow Lithuanians. With this in mind, the article aims to describe the contexts that determine the emotional state of Lithuanian emigrants and the distribution of emotional inequality among the most prominent social groups. The survey was conducted in order to test the emotional state of Lithuanian emigrants and gather empirical evidence regarding the specific reasons for that. Accordingly, three tasks are formulated for this empirical research: to perform a cluster analysis and distinguish the main social groups based on socioeconomic differences in society; to identify and describe contexts that lead to a poor emotional state (contexts of interactions) and a subjective reflexivity of the public; to explore the differences of emotional inequality among the researched groups. The article concludes with three intertwined factors that foster the poor emotional state of emigrating Lithuanians. The survey was conducted from January to February 2018 (number of respondents - N=1500)