A meeting with the director of Biedriba Droša Māja about experiences of working with international students.
Between 15th and 28th June 2021, we reviewed the information resources that are being provided by "Droša Māja" online at www.integration.lv in the areas of: social and cultural integration of in-migrants from third countries. In this regard, during our meetings with international students, we introduced them to various resources that are being offered for free at the website : www.integration.lv. We further sat down with Ms. Gunta Viksne - director of this NGO - and asked her about the experiences of her team with the international students. We discussed a number of issues ranging from:
(i) latvian language courses for general newcomers from third countries;
(ii) the response from the international students to the courses offered in partnership with Droša Māja;
(iii) the relevant frequently reported issues and challenges.
Since. Gunta and the author had been work colleagues for a longtime, the discussion did not yeild any newer insights. However, she guided us greately about how to manage project and how to organize the day to day activities and we thank her for that.
We found that the NGO regularly recieves information and consultation requests from international students and international student exterpreneurs regarding general issues faced by them in terms of: residence permits; work opportunities; issues related with initial adjustment in Latvia (rent agreemets, other general contracts, linguistic barriers and interpretation requests etcetera); and the willingness of international students of starting a business in Latvia. The particular area of concern for us was that of lingustic barriers for students in the everyday life in Latvia. Here, we also interviewed an international student who had experience of acquiring information from this NGO in terms of his own lived experience in the past five years.
Firstly, we came to know that "Droša Māja" serves as the most popular information resource among international students and there were many referrals from the international student regarding the most robust assistance that they received in response to their problems. Here, we questioned the student regarding the most concerning of all the problem that this student faced, that were: issues related with learning Latvian language and its impact of the life of this student; and issues related with general settlement in Latvia.
The students explained: “learning Latvian language is not an easy task. There are only few language courses that are available to international students. There is a bigger number of general migrants from other countries that results in long waiting time in queues. For instance, if I want to start learning Latvian language and register for a free course, I will get my turn in the second or third group, meaning 4-8 months from now”. This student had also contacted other NGOs like education development center, where he also experienced a shortage of, or perhaps a over crowding of immigrants from various countries with little to no space for international students.
He further elaborated: “ for other migrants, the reason to learn the Latvian language is to acquire a language certificate for permanent residency. Whereas, for us students, the need to learn Latvian language is due to the fact that many of companies (food delivery, Kebab shops. taxi driving etcetera) ask for obligatory knowledge of Latvian language”. This student named many instances when students received various penalties/warnings from the language agency of the state for working in a restaurant without the proficiency in Latvian language. We undertsood that the obligatory tieing up of language proficiency for jobs with minimal salary was a challenge that students face. It is due to the fact that firstly, the minimal time that the author of this article themselves took to learn the Latvian language was of 12-18 months, whereas for an international student this could be the entirety of their educational stay in Latvia. Therefore: a relaxed language policy for English proficient international student workforce could be a solution to the shortages of language schools for international students; and at the same time be justified waiver for newcomers who intend to stay in Latvia for the purpose of studies for up to 2 years. Any stay greater than the 2 years without the proficiecy in Latvian language could be penalized. It is due to the fact that it is averagely not possible to learn a foreign language within the first 6 months of stay in a country, when an individual commits to full-time studies in English language.