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Paper abstract:

Plenty has been written on Turkey as a destination for refugees from Syria and elsewhere, and plenty more has been written about the migrant experiences of Central Asians and Eastern Europeans in Russia. Understandably, the comparatively small-scale presence of Central Asians and Eastern Europeans, including Moldovans, in Turkey has attracted less scholarship. Nonetheless, Turkey has emerged in recent years as an attractive migration destination for both Central Asians, including Kyrgyzstanis, and Moldovans. This migration in turn is bounded by gender, as most Kyrgyz and Moldovan migrants in Turkey are women working in the domestic sector. In this paper, I analyze and compare the experiences of Moldovan and Kyrgyz online communities in Turkey, utilizing Facebook and Telegram groups to examine priorities, challenges, and collaboration within these communities. I also present these findings in the context of factors such as gender and ethnicity. I propose that gender and ethnicity both play a role in defining the nature of these online communities, revealing differences in the way that each group interfaces with Turkish society. Despite this, the overarching purpose of these online communities is the same—to replicate the connection of an in-person community amongst isolated individuals living in a foreign country.

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Paper abstract:

The Korean community of Kazakhstan formed as a result of the initial migration from the Korean peninsula to the Russian Far East at the end of the 19th century and further forced relocation to Central Asia ordered by Stalin in 1937. Initially labeled as a “yellow peril” and “fifth column”, Koreans managed to improve their status and obtain some internal mobility after Stalin’s death. Due to the lack of state-sponsored repatriating programs, the out-migration of Koreans from Central Asia was insignificant after the collapse of the USSR in the early 1990s.

However, the situation has changed in the recent decades. Although South Korea still does not have any repatriation policies regarding its post-Soviet co-ethnics, it does grant work visas to Central Asian Koreans. Given the deteriorating economic conditions in the latter states, many choose to use this opportunity to improve their economic situation. Thus, over 11,000 Koreans from Kazakhstan reside and work in South Korea today.

Through in-depth interviews during summer 2021 of fieldwork in fulfillment of my master’s degree, I found that Koreans from Kazakhstan migrating to South Korea might consider themselves to be part of a global Korean diaspora and view South Korea as a ‘homeland’. However, on arrival, they face various forms of social and economic exclusion, and instead find more commonality with other post-Soviet migrants in South Korea, regardless of ethnicity.

Sixteen participants to this research revealed that most of the migrants engage in 3D (dangerous, difficult, and dirty) jobs. These low-skilled labor migrants live and work at factories with little to no socialization due to long working hours and language limitations. Additionally, post-Soviet immigrants lacking state-sponsored support seek refuge in so called “Russian” neighborhoods. Ultimately, I contend that restricted opportunities to integrate encourage circular migration among Central Asian migrants and position them as problematic community who find it difficult to comply with South Korean law.

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Paper abstract:

This paper is a contribution to the body of knowledge about shuttle traders in post-Soviet spaces. It is established that shuttle traders are predominantly women and that they have contributed significantly to new nation-states GDP. However, there is still little body of discussion of Kazakh shuttle traders, especially those who emerged from small Kazakh towns for whom traveling to Kazakh large markets was as much of a hustle as crossing the borders with Russia, Eastern Europe, China or Turkey. Moreover, little is known about the ways shuttle trading affected the private lives and immediate families of Kazakh shuttle traders.

This paper aims to fill in this gap by exploring the experiences of shuttle traders from a small town in the South-West of Kazakhstan, who had traveled extremely long distances, crossed borders and worked transnationally. To shed light on what shuttle trading meant to shuttle traders and their families, the paper aims to include the reflection of both shuttle traders and their children on what their families did.

Ethnographic fieldwork done for this paper were divided into two stages. The first stage included participant observation in the market in the town with 4 shuttle traders who still work at the bazaar and their life history interviews. The second stage involved 4 online focus groups with adults who have grown up with such mothers, where preliminary findings from the first stage were used as incentive for group discussions.

I chose to focus on the transnational family dynamics enabled due to women’s long distance travels to illustrate how women’s mobility and extended absence brought changes to their homes. I argue that the gendered nature of familyhood normalized the extreme conditions of traveling experienced by women and abrupt detachment from home was the source of intense internal emotional conflicts for these women. Focus group discussions with children show that women’s absence flipped gender roles in the house and the old ways of kinship practice were disrupted. However, children’s reflection on childhood memories show that trade provided women with tools to reclaim their connection to their children. Children and women’s own sentiments towards women’s trading are still seeing changes.