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This paper examines the role of family language policy among the Uyghur diaspora in the USA. Since Uyghur language education was eliminated from the Xinjiang education system in China in 2017, the Uyghur language has gradually become vital for the Uyghur community to keep their Uyghur identity within the Uyghur diaspora. Uyghurs have immigrated to the United States since the 1980s. The largest Uyghur diaspora community in the USA lives in Fairfax, VA. Many Uyghur parents have tried to maintain the Uyghur language among the second and third generations of Uyghurs within the diaspora. Research suggests that family language policy is one of the critical factors in maintaining and revitalizing a language among heritage speakers. Slopsky (2004) indicates that family language policy includes language beliefs, language practice, and language efforts for using languages. In this paper, we will focus on family language policy among Uyghurs in the diaspora in Fairfax, VA, and how it affects the maintenance of the Uyghur language. The major research questions include: (1) What are parents’ beliefs on language use, and how does it influence language use at home? (2) How do parents support their children’s language practice? (3) What are the challenges for using the Uyghur language? We use a mixed-effect method in which we have an online questionnaire about Uyghur language usage and ideology among the Uyghur family as a quantitative analysis. The qualitative analysis uses in-depth interviews with Uyghur parents. Participants are parents of children who are attending a Uyghur language school on weekends in Fairfax, VA. The paper will discuss the results of how families use language practice in everyday life, the beliefs that influence their actions, and how much corresponding effort they put into maintaining the language.

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Asian communities in the USA continue to increase. According to the US Department of the Interior, between 1999 and 2019, more than 100,000 Central Asia migrants received the status of legal permanent residents of the United States. The areas of their residence in the USA are predominantly New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia. Although the diasporic Central Asian community has already lived for 30 years in the USA, the information about them is primarily sporadic and chiefly journalistic. This paper explores Central Asian migrant women’s integration in the abovementioned cities by studying their commuting experiences on public transport.

It is known that mobility in the cities above requires migrant women to undertake trips, which are most likely frequent but can vary in duration. The length of these trips depends chiefly on how far away the workplace. Their physical and bodily movements are usually accompanied by interactions with diverse passengers. Exchanges can also evoke emotions and feelings. Women may think, plan, get angry, get well, and get dreaming. They also expose their identity in public spaces and negotiate their identity implicitly or explicitly within the area of public transport. Transport use is, therefore, a social and practical experience.

Moreover, the choice and usage of a transport mode is not only a financial decision but also a social and economic one considering travel mode, road infrastructure, and norms. These aspects reflect a person’s identity related to marital role, kinship, education, ethnicity, and other identical patterns. Referring to Hanson’s statement on gendered ‘empowerment or disempowerment’ (Hanson, 2010), public transport can be – a physical means to realize social and personal developments. Still, at the same time, it can be a danger-prone and contested arena, producing expected and unexpected difficulties.

It is well-known that kinship in a migrant environment is not necessarily based on consanguinity or marriage. Relatives can also arrive from one region, district, or village. For example, in Philadelphia and Staten Island, Kyrgyz migrants from the Talas and Issyk-Kul regions consider themselves relatives and try to help each other in every possible way. Migrants from Uzbekistan chiefly reside in the New York area as they can find many ways to connect themselves with counterparts who came to the USA many years ago. Thus, mobility gives migrant women many chances to build social networks, interact and take advantage of opportunities to integrate into the host society and acquire, ‘mobility capital’.

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This paper focuses on past relations between U.S. Black internationalist women and Soviet Eurasian communities for their meaning for transnational history, feminist knowledge, and local struggles for justice. Black Internationalist intellectuals shared knowledge globally and formed alliances across nations and continents. However, the existing archives often hold fragmented traces (if any) of Black women and queer people’s experiences in Soviet Eurasia, i.e. Central Asia and East Europe. Even less is known about Eurasian communities’ perceptions of Black sojourners. Against these gaps and absences, my paper reflects on the meaning and value of past relationships, encounters, and exchanges for histories of gender knowledge in both the former Soviet spaces and the U.S. The term "decolonizing" means thinking beyond imperial knowledge production. In this sense, I explore past legacies and their role in spanning diverse regions and challenging multiple imperialisms. Drawing on my exploration of the archive, my paper focuses on how Louise Thompson Patterson, Claudia Jones, Eslanda Robeson, and Audre Lorde, among many others, traveled to Soviet Eurasia and tackled the problems of their times and imagined alternative futures that could secure survival for everybody. My reflections address both the limitations and possibilities that past exchanges hold for the current and the future.

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The paper explores human-dog relationship in the indigenous community of the Tuva republic, southeastern Siberia. The focus is on the indigenous knowledge and value of Laika in the taiga communities.