Today in public communication, it is increasingly presented as a city at a “breaking point,” where “ghettos” are forming and which must protect residents from the “problems of neighboring capitals.” This narrative does not come from outside. It is a product of our own political communication.
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The cost is not only ethical. It is economic. Talent attraction, investor confidence, flows of international students, the reputation of the creative industries capital – all of this shapes the narrative. A city that says that places of worship are a “bad signal” also sends a signal to potential newcomers – the very same ones whom the city integration plan approved this March calls new city residents and talents.
It is important to mention that in terms of content, integration processes are happening in Vilnius. Integration measures are funded by European Union funds, the Ministry of Social Security and Labour, and the municipality itself. Language courses, community centers, employment and orientation services are operating. This is not a facade, not a plan on paper, but real people working and real budget lines. But it is precisely Mayor Valdas Benkunskas’s rhetoric that undermines this work: it forms a public attitude that integration policy itself is a problem, not a solution. Vilnius invests in integration with one hand – with the other hand it discursively destroys its legitimacy. It is a branch on which it sits and cuts itself.
Two plans, two cities
Vilnius today has two integration plans. One – in the strategy. The other – in the headlines. And they are about different cities.
One Monday morning in Cathedral Square, in front of the Ministry of the Interior windows, a table with a signature sheet is set up. Vilnius Mayor Valdas Benkunskas invites passersby to sign that non-EU citizens, whose residence permit is extended after three years, must know Lithuanian at the A2 level. A few days before that – another public statement by the mayor: “As long as I am the mayor of Vilnius, no new mosques <…> will be allowed to be built in Vilnius.”
Two separate events, one logic. This logic in English is called fear mongering, or simply put, fear politics.
In the case of Vilnius integration policy, this is not an opinion but a process captured by the “Diversity Development Group” analysis of the public communication and media rhetoric of the Vilnius city municipality integration plan. In March–April 2026, a set of 20 publications was analyzed – LRT, Delfi, Lrytas, ELTA/BNS, official municipality channels, city portals, opinion articles, political communication on social networks.
The mayor’s statements about the mosque and the signature collection in Cathedral Square are no surprise.
The conclusion is unambiguous: the problem and threat frame dominates public communication, and the integration policy itself is presented more narrowly than it is defined in the document. The mayor’s statements about the mosque and the signature collection in Cathedral Square are not a surprise but a predictable continuation of the same model: the place where rhetoric moves from the headline to political action.
What is fear politics
In academic literature, fear mongering is described as the strategic construction of a threat narrative: a “folk devil” (Stanley Cohen’s term) is presented to society, the media amplifies the signal, experts confirm it, politicians propose stricter solutions, and society responds with compliance. Frank Furedi calls the same process a culture of fear: even when statistics reassure, rhetoric raises tension.
Fear politics does not mean lying. It means that from a complex phenomenon, the narrowest, most threatening frame is consciously selected, and it becomes the basis of public discourse.
It is important to say this before starting: public concern about integration issues is real and requires serious political attention. The question is not whether to talk, but how to talk.
Three frames in which the city speaks
Of the 20 analyzed publications, nine out of ten revolve around the Lithuanian language and its proficiency; in more than half, “challenges,” control, tightening of permits, “influx,” “breaking point,” or “ghettos” appear. And the concepts that form the very backbone of the integration plan – interculturalism, diversity, social cohesion, economic potential, talent attraction, city competitiveness – appear very rarely or not at all in communication.
Summarizing the analysis and looking more broadly – methodologically – three rhetorical frames dominate. The first is the control frame: integration is presented as a mechanism of regulation and permit extension. The second is the demographic and segregation threat frame, where phrases like “every tenth Vilnius resident is a foreigner,” “a breaking point has been reached,” “ghettos may form” sound. The third is the cultural identity loss frame: “Lithuanian is no longer heard on the streets of Vilnius.” The opportunity, diversity, or community strengthening frame is practically absent in the public space, although it forms the basis of urban integration policy.
A brief note about 10 percent
At the center of this rhetoric often appears the statement that “every tenth Vilnius resident is a foreigner, therefore ghettos are forming in the city.” I have already spoken about this; here I remind that in international literature there is no such universal “breaking point,” and the emergence of ghettos is determined not by percentages but by structural factors – the housing market, income inequality, labor market segregation, the education system, discrimination, social mobility. The claim about 10 percent has no scientific basis.
Vilnius integration plan: what is in the document, what is in public
Here lies the main paradox of this communication. The Vilnius city integration plan is actually a broad policy document. It covers economic integration, cultural dialogue, community inclusion, access to psychological help, education and information measures, one-stop-shop services, and language learning as an empowerment tool. This is integration policy in the true sense of the word: conditions that help a person become part of the city, and the city to function in harmonious diversity.
Rhetoric about integration itself begins to undermine the logic of integration policy.
However, in public communication, this spectrum is compressed into three elements: language proficiency as control, migration scale, and regulatory measures. The remaining 80 percent of policy content is invisible. Even the visual side reinforces this shift: images often appearing in communication, where other languages are crossed out with red lines, in international integration communication practice symbolize sanctions, prohibition, elimination. This is not an invitation to learn Lithuanian. This is not an invitation to learn Lithuanian. It is a signal of which linguistic expressions in the public space are considered undesirable.
International urban experience shows a simple thing: early use of segregation rhetoric often does not help solve problems but rather complicates building trust between local communities and new city residents. This is the essential paradox: rhetoric about integration itself begins to undermine the logic of integration policy. And this is exactly what we see today in Vilnius.
From the municipality office to national headlines
The most important conclusion of the analysis is not the quantity but the direction. Most of the rhetoric seen in the media did not originate in editorial offices. Keywords such as “breaking point,” “ghettos,” “crime,” “influx,” or “absence of Lithuanian in the public space” first appear in primary political communication – Vilnius municipality announcements, mayor’s statements, official slides – and only later are reproduced in publications and headlines.
This means that the frame formed at the local level successfully transfers to the national discourse. When the media today writes about integration, it is usually not an independent editorial interpretation – it is an amplified municipal tone. The media here creates less, quotes more. The political message formulated in the municipality becomes the “national conversation about integration.”
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Thus, one political actor gains what journalism researchers in English call primary definer status – the power to name the phenomenon first with the words by which it will be discussed throughout the country. This is not a conspiracy. It is a consequence of other perspectives – academic, expert, community – speaking more quietly, weakly, and reaching only niche audiences.
When the narrative moves into practice
So far, we have talked about language – about how the same concepts move from municipal announcements to media headlines. But fear politics does not remain in communication. The last two Vilnius events – the mayor’s statement about the mosque and the signature collection for stricter language requirements – are precisely the place where the narrative moves from a rhetorical frame to political action. This is no longer rhetoric. This is the materialization of rhetoric.
The mosque case: how the cultural loss frame works
A student named Shabhaz filmed his journey to prayer one afternoon. The final frame is the Justiniškės football arena, where hundreds of Muslims living in Vilnius gather to pray. In a city without a mosque, the football field becomes a place of worship. This image is the real “breaking point” of Vilnius integration policy: not where rhetoric points to look, but where city infrastructure can no longer keep up with reality.
Speaking about the mosque in Vilnius, the mayor’s position is neither urbanistic nor legal. It is rhetorical. The main argument is not what is happening in Vilnius but the alleged “import” of problems from neighboring capitals. This is a classic step of fear politics: the threat is transferred to another time and place, and the local decision is presented as protection from what has not happened.
The second step is the “repainting” of figures: community representatives are called “new immigrants,” “manipulative,” “money-laundered.” However, as Motiejus Jakubauskas, head of the Lithuanian Tatar Communities Union, reminds, the Tatar mosque in Vilnius stood since the 16th century and was leveled by the Soviets – so this is not a “newcomers” issue. And Vytautas Magnus University professor Egdūnas Račius reminds of the opposite logic: a visible, open place of prayer is a condition for integration, not a threat. When the community gathers in a publicly recognized building, it becomes part of the city; when it prays in a football arena or basement, it remains outside the city. These voices are not heard in communication. The threat frame remains – and the principle we formulated directly in the DDG analysis: communication about segregation must not itself create it discursively.
Signature collection: a closed circle in real time
A person who stopped by the table in Cathedral Square this morning almost never thinks that they are signing against something. They sign for the Lithuanian language – the same one their grandmother raised them with, the one children learn, the one they dream in. However, the signature placed on the document lying on the table already goes into another text – into political pressure that will be presented as a “citizens’ mandate.” The signature form has a headline. On the headline lies a rhetorical frame. And the frame does not necessarily coincide with the signer’s intention.
The question on which signatures are collected is pre-formulated: non-EU citizens must know Lithuanian at the A2 level after three years, otherwise – no permit. No one publicly asks whether this is an effective measure according to available international practice; whether the three-year term corresponds to real language learning opportunities in Vilnius; or whether the measure itself does not conflict with the Ministry of the Interior’s already planned five-year term, reminded by the interior minister in April. There is no question. There is a signature “for the Lithuanian language” – and it is presented as a mandate. Exactly the same mechanism that academic literature in English calls manufactured consent: an opinion that is not formed from consideration but created in a pre-constructed choice field.
The logic of this mechanism becomes even clearer when looking at the measurement of public attitudes on the same topic. The last part of the DDG analysis examined the questionnaire formulations of the February 2026 public attitude survey (Omnibus). About some questions’ construction, it can be said directly: it is not a neutral measurement instrument but a pre-recorded response contour. Three specific examples explain why.
The first question: “If the current Lithuanian integration policy did not change, it would increase the country’s security risks in the future.” At first glance – it seems like a neutral statement that one can agree or disagree with. In fact, it is already an answer to a question not yet asked: it states that the current policy is problematic and poses security risks and only asks the respondent to confirm this statement. In sociology, in English, this is called a leading question – a question in which the answer is partly encoded in the formulation itself. A neutral equivalent would sound like: “How do you assess the effectiveness of the current integration policy?” It is a small vocabulary change but a completely different research tool.
The second question: “If immigrants living in Vilnius for several years used Lithuanian in everyday situations, immigration would cause much fewer problems.” This statement combines two separate assumptions in one sentence: that immigration generally causes problems, and that it is precisely language that is the main cause of those problems. A respondent who agrees with the second part automatically agrees with the first, and vice versa. In sociology, in English, this is called a double-barreled question; such questions are not included in serious surveys because they measure two things at once, and the answer cannot be accurately assigned to either.
The third question asks respondents to rate the “strictness” of the current policy on a 10-point scale. The average score is 3.6 points, and the desired is 8 points. At first glance, a strong conclusion: people want stricter policy. However, the study never checked a simpler thing – whether respondents even know what the current policy is. If a person thinks it is “lenient,” but this is based on a false impression, not reading regulations, what is measured is no longer opinion. Ignorance dressed in an opinion suit is measured – and in political decision-making, it weighs as much as an informed assessment.
Separately, each such formulation is a methodological gap. Taken together, they create a tendency: the study begins to function not as a tool of cognition but as a tool of legitimation. (1) Communication creates a narrative, (2) the study, formulated with the logic of the same narrative, “confirms” it, (3) confirmation legitimizes further communication – mosque ban, signature collection, even stricter regulation. (4) The circle closes. And at the next stage, it does not even require conspiracy or further artificial reproduction. Inertia is enough.
Why now?
This communication should not be read separately from the political calendar. Municipal elections are approaching – and as elections approach, fear politics is always more attractive not because its content is correct but because it works faster than any policy requiring explanation. Threat does not require context. It only needs a headline, a signature, and a well-chosen rhetorical frame.
This explains why the content of integration policy, fitting into several dozen pages of political documents, is compressed in public communication into three concepts – language, scale, and regulation. Policy is long, the election campaign is short. But this means that the primary goal of such communication is not to solve the integration issue. The goal becomes mobilizing the electorate through intimidation. Stating this directly, integration can again be discussed as a city policy, not an election mobilization issue.
By the way, these rhetorical models are not unique to Vilnius. Some of the rhetorical frames used today in Vilnius resemble broader anti-immigration narratives that have dominated parts of Europe’s far-right communication over the past decade, especially in Germany and Sweden. Researchers have repeatedly noted that such narratives were actively amplified in Russian disinformation networks to increase societal polarization and distrust in democratic institutions.
In conclusion: a narrative of opportunities
There is an alternative, and it is lined up at the very end of the DDG analysis – alongside the threat narrative, concept by concept. Migration growth is not an “influx” but Vilnius’s growth and labor market dynamics; language is not a control instrument but a tool for empowerment and social inclusion; integration policy itself is not a reaction to problems but an investment in the city’s social and economic potential.
Migrants are not a potential risk but new city residents and talents. Public order is not a “ghetto risk” but community strengthening and social cohesion. Culture is not loss but diversity and intercultural dialogue. And the city identity is not a threat to the Lithuanian language but a modern, open European city that knows its wealth is its people – not only those already here but also those it will still invite.
Such communication is currently lacking from the Vilnius municipality. It must appear not as public relations or political communication campaign content but as a clear and strategic narrative answering residents’ question about what kind of city we want to live in. Until it exists, signatures in Cathedral Square are collected not for the Lithuanian language but for fear politics.
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