"This article analyses the intersection of global recession with the underlying crisis of neo-liberalism in Baltic Lithuania, and the disappointment of expectations regarding the promised benefits of free market capitalism for the citizens of post-communist society. Drawing on an empirical analysis of Lithuania, a new European Union member state and former Soviet republic, the post-communist trajectory of neo-liberal economic and social development is critiqued. Global economic and financial crisis has resulted in a social and economic ‘shock'. It occurred in an environment already marked by disappointment, alienation and high outward migration. Through an analysis of ‘voice' expressed in ‘discourses of discontent', the article attempts to chart the impact of ‘hard times'. It predicts a new ‘exit' in the form of a surge of outward migration resulting from the failures of ‘voice', and the concerning possibility of ‘internal exit'. "

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