Abstract:

Kazakhstan, a diverse and multicultural country in Central Asia, is home a vast array of ethnic groups, including various minorities that contribute to the nation's cultural mosaic. The largest minority groups in Kazakhstan the Russians, Uzbeks, Uighurs, Ukrainians, and Tatars, among others. The government of Kazakhstan for many years sought to promote civic nation based state citizenship. To foster a harmonious coexistence among its diverse population, the officials used top down approach and policies that promoted cultural and linguistic pluralism.

The research on national identity in Kazakhstan has been based on top down approaches. However, recent research shifted toward a bottom up approach by exploring people’s views and attitudes toward governmentally sanctioned nation-building projects. Several scholars challenged the top down approach suggesting focusing on the views from below. Eric Hobsbawm, for instance, said that “the assumptions, hopes, needs, longings and interests of ordinary people cannot be neglected.” In the context of Kazakhstan, the issue of minorities has not received adequate attention. Some recent works focus on minorities (Werner et al 2017; Imyarova, 2022; Malakhov and Osipov, 2023) however, there was no a comprehensive overview/research on the views and attitudes of self, civic and ethnic identities by ethnic minorities in Kazakhstan.

Although the government has implemented some measures to protect the rights of minorities, interethnic clashes occurred in Kazakhstan from time to time. This research seeks to understand how minorities view the nation-building projects in Kazakhstan and to what extent they support civic and ethnic national identities. The research is based on a nation-wide survey (N=4,000) of ethnic groups conducted in 2023 and semi-structured interviews.

The question that the study seeks to answer include: To what extent ethnic minorities identify themselves with Kazakhstani identity and/or their own ethnic identity? How do ethnic minorities navigate their identities in the post-independence period? It provides a bottom up approach of how ethnic minorities position themselves in Kazakhstan and how they relate to Kazakhstani nation or ethnicity. The uniqueness of the study is that it contains data on perceptions and attitudes of 12 ethnic groups in Kazakhstan. This is one of the largest studies on nation-building in Kazakhstan.

References

Vladimir Malakhov & Alexander Osipov (28 Aug 2023): Managing Ethnic

Diversity in Post-Soviet Context: The Cases of Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan, Problems of

Post-Communism

Imyarova, Zulfiya. "Balancing between majorities: the negotiable identity of Osh Dungans." Central Asian Survey 41.3 (2022): 402-418.