Artykuł prezentuje projekt realizowany przez uczelnie partnerskie w Polsce (Opole) i Republice Czeskiej (Hawirzów) dotyczący jakości i stylu życia oraz planów życiowych i tożsamości mieszkańców pogranicza polsko-czeskiego po przyjęciu Polski i Czech do Unii Europejskiej. Przedstawiono cele projektu, założenia metodologiczne, wybrane wyniki badań, charakteryzujące cztery kategorie badawcze: jakość i styl życia, plany życiowe i tożsamość mieszkańców pogranicza z perspektywy potencjału społeczno-kulturalnego pogranicza, przyjęcia Polski i Czech do EU, perspektywy pogranicza oraz edukacji międzykulturowej. Badania sondażowe przeprowadzono po stronie polskiej w Euroregionie Pradziad, po stronie czeskiej w Euroregionie Beskidy na łącznej próbie 615 uczniów i 502 studentów. Pozwoliły one na postawienie diagnozy dotyczącej badanych problemów i określenie uwarunkowań badanych kategorii.

Life plans of the inhabitants of the Polish-Czech borderland against a comparative background

The article concerns a part of the research carried out among learners and university students from the Polish-Czech border area (Prudnik, Nysa and Opole counties on the Polish side and Moravian-Czech district on the Czech side) within the Pradziad Euroregion Project. The theoretical aim of the project was to get to know the lifestyle and quality of life of the inhabitants of the Czech-Polish border area, their life plans and identity, as regards the activities of the Pradziad Euroregion, as well as the knowledge of young borderland inhabitants about the life and problems of their neighbours from abroad. The practical aim of the project was to raise awareness of the role of quality of life for the functioning of the society by popularising the issue (conferences, publications) and the possibility of enriching the knowledge of these young inhabitants. This article presents only the part of the research that deals with respondents’ opinions on life plans in the context of the Polish-Czech borderland. The analysis was focused on one of the specific questions of the research: What are the life plans of pupils and university students from the Polish-Czech borderland? The research results refer to the declarations related to plans to stay in the homeland, perceptions of the respondents’ place of residence, or perceptions of the different qualities of their own towns and countries. In the data analysis, statistical methods related to testing the statistical significance of differences between variables with the Chi-square test (x2) were applied.

Over the last decades higher education became a crucial factor increasing the chances of employment. Additionally, the dynamics of changes on the labour market requires a variety of vocational skills from an employee. A contemporary employee ought to incorporate the necessity of work change and retraining into their vision of employment. Labour market analysts point out that people even with good, but narrow qualifications, have potentially the lowest chances of finding a job. If one takes the fact of disability into consideration, these chances are clearly minimising. The key question which should be answered is whether higher education takes an important place in the life plans of people with disability.