Abstract

This research examines interethnic marriage as a lens for understanding identity formation, kinship transformation, and social belonging in post-Soviet Kazakhstan. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Southern Kazakhstan (Turkistan region) and complementary interviews conducted in Eastern Kazakhstan, the study highlights how mixed families navigate cultural norms, gendered expectations, and moral anxieties in contexts marked by divergent regional legacies.

In the South, kinship remains governed by patrilineal structures, Islamic ethics, and clan-based obligations (e.g., zheti ata), often framing interethnic unions as socially disruptive or morally ambiguous. By contrast, the East—shaped by Soviet industrialisation, multiethnic coexistence, and relative secularism—exhibits more fluid perceptions of identity and mixed marriage. This contrast allows for a rich comparative framework on how postcolonial states like Kazakhstan regulate symbolic boundaries through both policy and intimate life.

The research draws on over 95 in-depth interviews, participant observation, and family-level narratives gathered between 2021 and 2025. It explores how couples and extended kin engage in emotional and ideological negotiations about language, religion, naming practices, and children's upbringing—the role of women, particularly mothers and mothers-in-law, as cultural mediators is critically examined.

The study also integrates a digital ethnography component. Using natural language processing, topic modelling, and sentiment analysis, it investigates online conversations about interethnic unions across TikTok, Instagram, and Telegram. These platforms serve as “affective publics,” where humour, nostalgia, resentment, and pride circulate in ways that both echo and challenge offline discourses. Digital spaces thus become key arenas where post-Soviet imaginaries of nationhood, ethnicity, and purity are performed and contested.

Importantly, the fieldwork in Eastern Kazakhstan was enriched by a collaborative component—interviews conducted by a regional colleague—enabling a grounded comparative perspective.

This study contributes to debates in kinship anthropology, postcolonial identity, and digital culture, positioning marriage not as a static institution but as a dynamic arena of cultural transformation. The research was supported by a national grant AR23490262 “Tarbagatai Region Kazakhs: A Historical-Ethnographic Study (19th–21st Century)”.