Abstract

The study examines how the boundaries of national belonging are reinterpreted in the Kazakhstani public sphere through the case of naturalised athletes who represent the country while having different ethnic backgrounds or citizenship. Drawing on Craig Calhoun’s conception of the nation as a dynamic practice of distinguishing between “us” and “them”, we analyse the conditions under which such athletes are incorporated into the symbolic category of “ours” within Kazakhstan’s multiethnic context.

The empirical basis consists of a corpus of comments from digital media and social networks discussing athletes from various disciplines who have represented Kazakhstan in different periods. The selection of figures with diverse career trajectories, from consistently successful athletes to those who have provoked more ambivalent or contested reactions, allows us to trace shifts in public attitudes and to identify the mechanisms of symbolic inclusion. Particular attention is paid to how sporting achievements, the frequency of appearing with national symbols, and public statements referencing Kazakhstan shape perceptions of an athlete as belonging to the national community.

We assume that high performance often facilitates a pragmatic form of acceptance in which origin becomes secondary. However, such inclusion remains partial and contingent on current sporting success, media framings, and prevailing discursive moods. The case of naturalised athletes thus offers a lens for observing which criteria are regarded as legitimate for recognising national belonging, how society negotiates between ethnocultural expectations and civic identity, and how sport functions as an arena in which the boundaries of Kazakhstan’s national “we” are continuously reassembled.