Speaker
Description
Abstract
Lithuanian orphans sing patriotic songs at Šakiai Diakonija, my diaconal workplace, located just a 20-minute drive from the Russian border—and roughly 2 minutes for the medium-range missiles stationed in Kaliningrad. Recentring human security in the investigation of children’s lives at EU borders, this contribution offers valuable insights into pre-conflict preventive security policy.
These Lithuanian Children exemplify the impact of art and music in building social resilience. Their case study reaches beyond the traditional policy programmes implemented in Lithuania, including rearmament policies, civilian drone operation, and evacuation trainings. Non-traditional resilience-building with vulnerable youth at the Russian border emphasises everyday artistic methods, targeting higher psychological resilience and thus offering youth the tools to deal with the adverse impact of rising military tensions and potential armed conflict. This approach aims to prevent severe psychological pathologies, with positive outcomes for both individual lives and national health systems.
Following a localised bottom-up approach to security studies, this qualitative case study touches on novel conflict prevention policies that address children’s lived reality within European security politics. The case study draws on practical social work with orphans, children with disabilities, and vulnerable youth in Lithuania. It is inherently transdisciplinary, employing theory of traditional international relations as well as artistic studies. Building on the feminist-constructivist assumption that the personal and political are two interrelated spheres, it pays attention to the political discourses around Lithuanian state security, and their effect on youth’s personal development. Vice versa, lived realities constitute the starting point in constructing national identities, as evident in children’s selecting patriotic songs for the diaconical Christmas celebration. The transdisciplinary, intersectional feminist perspective thus sheds light on the connections between everyday practices and macro-political security.
All in all, this contribution highlights how a bottom-up, resilience-driven preventive approach to conflict reshapes local security policy.
| If you are submitting an Open Panel proposal, have you included all four abstracts in attachment? | No, I am submitting a Closed Panel abstract |
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| Would you like to be considered for travel funding through the NetSec COST Action? | Yes |
| Are you a member of the NetSec Management Committee? | No |
| What discipline or branch of humanities or social sciences do you identify yourself with? | Critical Security Studies, Transdisciplinary Artistic Policy |
| Which of the following best describes your stage of the career? | BA/MA Student |
| In which country is your home institution? | Lithuania |
| What is your gender? | Female |