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Abstract

This qualitative study explores multiple domains of exclusion of female farmers from water access at the community level and uncovers different challenges they face in agricultural water management. Through in-depth interviews and focus group discussions, the study uncovers the experiences of female farmers in one of the most densely populated regions of Uzbekistan.

The findings highlight the differentiated access and marginalization of all female farmers and in particular, single women-headed households and smallholder farmers. These women are excluded from access to an important agricultural resource due to gender roles and stereotypes, power imbalances, conflicts over water and exposure to gender-based violence, lack of participation in water management meetings and decision-making, the influence of societal norms, and poor water management mechanisms. Applying alternative informal practices to irrigate their farms puts these women at risk of gender-based violence and has negative implications on the reputation of these farmers. In addition, these farmers do not receive any support from water management institutions or from local community.

Poor access to irrigation water results not only in economic constraints and loss of land and livelihoods but also in the exploitation of these farmers and their children exacerbating their poverty and vulnerability. In addition, these challenges decrease their adaptive capacity to climate change since their livelihoods depend on subsistence farming.

The findings of the study emphasize the necessity of improving water supply services to satisfy the needs of the marginalized sections of the population in rural areas, combating corruption in water distribution and involving all water users in decision-making about water in communities focusing on households headed by women.

The study uncovers important implications of the lack of irrigation water and the necessity to conduct further research on the nexus between gender-based violence, climate change, and conflicts over water.

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Abstract

Over the past three decades, Kazakhstan has experienced a remarkable transformation from a socialist republic to an upper-middle-income, globally integrated economy. However, despite sustained GDP growth, primarily between 2000 and 2007 and early 2010s, the trajectory of this transformation has come at a high social cost: Kazakhstan today is marked by some of the deepest income and wealth inequalities in the Eurasian region. This inequality is more apparent when income and wealth concentration is examined. Between 2013 and 2023, the share of national income earned by the top 1% rose from 13.84% to 14.53%, while for the poorest (the bottom 50%), it fell from 19.16% to 18.4%. These inequalities are not incidental; rather, they are intrinsic to the political economy regime that has taken root since the early 1990s. This paper explores the structural, institutional, and ideological forces that have produced and sustained inequality in Kazakhstan, drawing from the theoretical traditions of critical political economy and heterodox development thought.

In contrast to mainstream approaches that treat inequality as a side effect of insufficient reform or weak institutions, this study argues that the Kazakh model is a paradigmatic case of neoliberal statecraft. The country’s enthusiastic adoption of market restructuring - featuring flat taxes, privatization, financial liberalization, and commodification of social services - has systematically favored capital over labor and entrenched a new class of rentier elites. The ideological ascendancy of neoclassical economics in Kazakh policymaking circles has further cemented a technocratic, depoliticized approach to inequality, where social protections are substituted by financial inclusion and GDP remains the primary development metric.

The project’s central argument is that neoliberal capitalism entrenched in the country has regressive effect on income and wealth distribution, leading to increased inequality. Drawing on recent critical political economy literature (e.g. Hudson 2014; Sayer 2015; Christophers 2020; Sanghera and Satybaldieva 2021), causal mechanisms and outcomes of the current political economy regime are examined in Kazakhstan. The study leads to the identification of components of upward distribution in contemporary capitalism. This framework explores how the neoliberal regime of capital accumulation has increasingly concentrated income and wealth through unequal ownership and control of commodities and resources. By examining inequality through the lens of political economy, this research not only challenges prevailing policy orthodoxy but also contributes to the growing call for the decolonization of development thinking in the post-socialist world.

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This paper explores the economic adaptation strategies of the Afghan Kyrgyz resettled in Kara-Balta, Kyrgyzstan, following their migration from the Wakhan corridor in northeastern Afghanistan. After years of negotiation between Kabul and Bishkek, the first groups arrived in 2017, with continued resettlement following the collapse of the Afghan government in 2021. While previous research has addressed the identity and displacement of the Afghan Kyrgyz, this study focuses specifically on how former nomadic herders have restructured their livelihoods in a new economic environment.

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, including interviews, participant observation, and field notes collected in Kara-Balta (Chui oblast), this paper investigates how the Afghan Kyrgyz navigate Kyrgyzstan’s labor market, how they draw on traditional knowledge, and how they respond to structural constraints. The research also examines the role of state support and local community assistance in shaping their integration and economic survival.

Preliminary insights suggest that while livestock-based economic models remain central to cultural memory, adaptation has required diversification—ranging from wage labor to small trade and reliance on diaspora networks. The transition from a semi-isolated high-mountain economy to semi-urban settlement has also raised questions of long-term economic sustainability and generational identity transformation.

This study contributes to migration and displacement literature by analyzing an under-researched case of return migration from Afghanistan to an ancestral homeland, contextualized within broader themes of mobility, statehood, and resilience in Central Asia. It highlights how economic strategies are not only survival tools, but also expressions of cultural continuity and innovation among displaced communities.

By shedding light on the Afghan Kyrgyz case, the paper also informs broader conversations on migrant integration, rural-to-urban transition, and adaptation in post-Soviet contexts.

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By blending Soviet archival materials with Kyrgyz genealogical sources, this paper examines how the lineage principle intersected with Soviet socialist principles within early Soviet Kyrgyz society, particularly among Kyrgyz political elites in the 1920s and 1930s. There is a growing body of literature on early Soviet Central Asia that argues that national elites in Central Asia mediated the newly enforced Soviet principles to the local population, playing a crucial role in the Sovietization of the region. However, what is often overlooked in the literature is that many of the elites born and raised in the final decade of the Russian Empire retained a strong sense of traditional identity. In the nomadic part of Central Asia, they continued to operate in a society that was predominantly structured around lineages. If so, how did the Kyrgyz political elite and local Soviet activists navigate the tension between lineage-based structures and the increasing pressure to conform to the ideological framework of the Soviet state? Combining and critically examining Soviet primary sources and Kyrgyz lineage genealogies, this paper argues that the Kyrgyz political elite employed the lineage principle as a powerful tool for mobilization against their rivals and for mediating Soviet power within society. It also shows how they tried to reconcile Soviet and lineage logics, prompting us to think more critically about the hybrid nature of the purportedly omnipotent Soviet regime.