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This paper explores the concept of civic identity and its implementation in Kyrgyzstan and compares it with approaches in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. After gaining independence Central Asian states have started to build new forms of national identities for their diverse societies. The focus of the study is how Kyrgyzstan has conceptualized civic identity through the recent official document The Concept for the Development of Civic Identity “Kyrgyz Zharany” (2021–2026). This document promotes equality, diversity, social cohesion and civic responsibility. Using discourse and content analysis this research examines how the concept of civic identity is institutionalized in education, media and youth policy. In comparative analysis, the thesis shows similarities and differences with Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan approaches. By analyzing official discourses and documents, this research contributes to understanding how these three post-Soviet states use civic identity as a tool of nation-building and social integration in Central Asia.

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This paper explores the origins of sinophobia in contemporary Kazakhstan by analyzing the evidence from Kazakh Soviet historical novels. Despite the general statements regarding the role of literature in building anti-China sentiment in Kazakh society during the Sino-Soviet split, there has been no in-depth analysis of such works and discourses. Thus, I attempt to address this gap in the scholarly literature by undertaking a thematic and critical discourse analysis of two famous Kazakh novels, comprising four books, from the late 1960s and early 1970s. Namely, the trilogy Koshpendiler (Nomads) by Ilyas Esenberlin and Gonetz (Rider) by Anuar Alimzhanov were investigated for their rhetoric on China and the Chinese. I reveal anti-China or sinophobic narratives from these historical fiction pieces and, consequently, argue that they coincide with the Soviet colonial discourse strategies towards Soviet Asia and ethnic minorities that instrumentalize China as the historical “other”. I demonstrate that Soviet-Russian notions of "lesser evil", "besieged fortress", and "Chinese lebensraum" were the main pillars of the anti-China rhetoric in the novels. I conclude that otherization of China can be seen as one of the trade-off strategies that allowed for the ethnic nationalist rhetoric in these novels to get through Soviet censorship. The paper applies critical constructivist theory and treats the concept of sinophobia as a social construct. The work is based on my 2024 undergraduate thesis and is being reformulated for the conference.

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How should post-Soviet nation-building in Kazakhstan be analysed: as a project driven by state elites from above, or as a process negotiated from below through everyday identities, language practices, and citizen responses? This paper argues that the opposition between top-down and bottom-up approaches is analytically limiting. Drawing on Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s discourse theory, and engaging Rogers Brubaker’s concept of the nationalizing state, it reconceptualises post-Soviet nation-building in Kazakhstan as a single hegemonic field in which official state projects, minority responses, and citizen-level perceptions are articulated together rather than operating as separate domains.

The paper examines three interrelated dynamics. First, it analyses how Kazakh state elites constructed a hegemonic project in the 1990s around language policy, citizenship, demographic restructuring, and diaspora repatriation. Through these processes, Kazakhness was articulated as the core signifier of post-Soviet restoration and legitimate statehood. Second, it shows how this project was later reformulated through broader and more incorporative discourses of national unity, Kazakhstaniness, and Eurasianism, enabling the state discourse to widen its legitimacy without relinquishing the privileged position of the titular nation. Rather than displacing the earlier project, these discourses reworked and stabilised it under changing domestic and international conditions. Third, the paper investigates why Russian and Russophone minority actors failed to consolidate a durable counter-hegemonic project despite early resistance to language reform, bureaucratic restructuring, and demographic change. Their claims remained fragmented, while state strategies of selective accommodation, depoliticisation, and symbolic inclusion limited the emergence of a coherent rival discourse.

Rather than separating elite projects from everyday negotiations, the paper reads legal and political texts, minority responses, and citizen-centred studies within a single hegemonic field. In doing so, it argues that the top-down/bottom-up distinction obscures the processes through which “the nation,” “the people,” and legitimate belonging are constructed in Kazakhstan. More broadly, the paper suggests that discourse theory offers a useful way to rethink post-Soviet nation-building beyond static analytical binaries.