Paper abstract:

This paper seeks to offer a better understanding of the self-perception of Uyghur youths in Almaty, seeking to identify both uniting factors and cleavages within the community. English language scholarship regarding the self-identity of Uyghurs in Kazakhstan has traditionally focused on proving or disproving the existence of three distinct groups: the yerliklär (‘locals’ who have lived in Kazakhstan and the adjacent Ili valley for over a hundred years), kegänlär (‘newcomers’ with roots in the migrations from China in the 1950s and 1960s), and the khitailiklär (the ‘Chinese’ or Uyghurs who have arrived in Kazakhstan since the dissolution of the Soviet Union). For the youths of Almaty, however, these terms sound at best unfamiliar, and, at worst, anachronistic to Uyghur life in an urbanised, Russified and increasingly internationalised milieu. In recent years the identity of the Uyghur youth has been shaped by a myriad of factors, including the growth of social justice movements in Almaty, the increasing prominence of a global Uyghur online community, the cut-off of links with the ‘historical homeland’ due to Covid-19 border closures, and, most significantly, by the widespread ‘re-education’ of Uyghurs in neighbouring Xinjiang following the region’s ‘de-extremification ordinance’ of 2017. A study of the Uyghur youth in Almaty is not only politically relevant, it also offers a useful building block which can be used in future studies regarding the self-perception of ‘transborder’ populations, ‘securitized’ peoples and the assimilation processes of ethnic minorities in Kazakhstan.

During the summer of 2022 I will conduct qualitative semi-structured interviews with the Uyghur youths of Almaty as part of my master’s thesis regarding the self-perception of ethnic minorities in Kazakhstan. The preliminary findings of these interviews will provide the basis for this paper.