Solidarity Discourse Governing COVID-19 Mobility in Lithuania

The aim of the paper is to analyse, first, when and how the rhetoric of solidarity became part of the pandemic mobility governance and how this rhetoric disappeared from it, and second, what kind of solidarity rhetoric is constructed in the context of emergency situations constructed by the main governmental institutions. The empirical case of the research is Lithuania and its governmental discourse produced during the two years of pandemic emergency governance (in the context of mobility; data from official discourse from February, 2020 till April, 2022 when the pandemic governance officially ended in Lithuania). Focusing on the solidarity discourse allows asking a) how it fits in with the paternalistic leadership of 2016-2020 government, and b) whether and how this type of leadership, together with the rhetoric of solidarity, is changing with the arrival of 2020-2024 government. The paper considers four approaches towards solidarity in the academic literature: solidarity and morality; solidarity and society;solidarity and the pursuit of freedom and solidarity and the welfare state. The analysis of the data will demonstrate that of the four key contexts for the expression of solidarity in the Lithuanian context of pandemic and its mobility management, two are most important: in the initial period, the appeal to solidarity, mobilisation, togetherness dominates, while in the second period (before the Russian war in Ukraine), the appeal to solidarity, awareness, responsibility dominates. It will be also shown how solidarity on (in)mobility is in a balance between affirming and demanding the emotional unity of the society and the solidarity which relies on demands for rationality for the wellbeing of the state and the smart calculations of risks, between the bureaucratic institutionalisation of solidarity (up to the point of paradoxical 'vertical solidarity', where solidarity with the government is called for) and the economy of self-help as a self-discipline.