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Abstract

This ethnographic account explores the economic adaptation of Afghan migrants in Kyrgyzstan, concentrating on how individuals navigate instability, mobilize social networks, and negotiate barriers. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews, the study critically engages migration literature to frame economic adaptation as a multidimensional process shaped by legal status, cultural context, and social capital.

Findings reveal that Afghan migrants first rely on kinship and ethnic networks for basic survival, gradually modifying and accumulating capital to achieve economic mobility. Despite restrictive legal regimes, many negotiate their status informally—collaborating with locals, utilizing proxy documentation, or maintaining strategic ties with officials. Language acquisition, cultural adjustment, and resilience in precarious labor markets further illustrate the complex interplay between structure and agency.

This account contributes to Central Asian migration studies by offering a grounded account of how displaced Afghans carve out economic livelihoods under constraint, challenging linear or state-centered models of integration.

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This paper analyzes the strategies, directions and instruments of the soft power policies pursued by Turkey and China in Central Asia. Both states have focused their main attention on education, language, and culture, which serve as the main tools of their soft power policy in these areas. The theoretical framework of the research is based on the concept of soft power developed by Joseph Nye. In addition, in the study was discusses the interpretations of soft power proposed by Chinese and Turkish scholars. The research methodology is based on content analysis and case study methods. The linguistic and cultural activities of the Confucius and the Yunus Emre Institutes were examined using the case study method. Within the framework of Turkey's language policy, particular attention has been given to the issue of adopting a common alphabet. China conducts educational and cultural activities within the framework of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the Belt and Road Initiative. I argue that the soft power strategies of Turkey and China in Central Asia have a distinctive characteristic: China employs soft power primarily to reinforce its economic and political influence, whereas Turkey utilizes it within the framework of a common ethnolinguistic space and the formation of a common Turkic identity. This research is based on published materials, including reports, official documents, and analytical materials.

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The Silk Road of Central Eurasia had a distinctive kind of space where cultures met, intellectual traditions intersected, and trade networks took place, thereby reassigning meaning and movement to the rich, diverse history of the land. Drawing on Martin Heidegger’s reflections on dwelling, alētheia (unconcealment), and Gelassenheit (releasement), the author intends to reinterpret space through a distinctly philosophical lens. The scholar seeks to answer the question of how Silk Road hubs such as Samarkand, Bukhara, and Kashgar can be rethought as “gathering” spaces rather than only as backdrops to trade.

The scholar in her research employs a conceptual and interpretative methodology with an emphasis on phenomenological textual analysis. The philosophical texts by Heidegger, especially “Building, Dwelling, Thinking” and related essays on technology and space, along with references to selected historical and travel accounts, will reconstruct how these sources describe movement, staying, and encounter in ways that resonate with or challenge high understanding of space as constituted by dwelling, not merely by coordinates of property. The paper will address the following questions: Can we view the Silk Road not as a corridor of commerce, but as a space of relational dwelling? In what ways do the Silk Road gatherings resemble the gathering spaces that Heidegger associates with poetic and non-instrumental forms of dwelling? How do we look at spaces that are shaped by modern technological framing (Gestell)? The scholar further raises the question of what implications this interpretation will have for contemporary debates about borders, migration, and environmental belonging in an age of digital and economic abstraction.

By focusing on these philosophical questions, the paper seeks to understand and show how Central Eurasian crossroads can contribute to a broad philosophy of space, in which one comes across hospitality, openness, and the rethinking of place as relational and process-oriented in the global interconnected world. The conclusion will focus on how Silk Road is not only limited to regional study, but also as a conceptual resource for rethinking how humans inhabit and share space in an interconnected world

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Abstract

The historiography of the Silk Road has long focused primarily on the northern and central trans‑Eurasian routes linking China with Central Asia and the Mediterranean world. In this dominant narrative, the southern corridors that connected Iran, the Persian Gulf, and the Indian subcontinent have received comparatively limited scholarly attention. This paper introduces and develops the concept of the “Jade Road” as an analytical framework for reconsidering the role of southern Silk Road networks in the historical formation of Central Eurasian space.

Drawing on Persian and Arabic historical sources, geographical literature, and commercial records, this study examines the routes that connected Khurasan, southern Iran, the Persian Gulf ports, and the markets of the Indian subcontinent. These routes constituted an important system of exchange through which commodities such as horses, precious stones including jade, textiles, and other luxury goods circulated across regions. At the same time, these networks enabled the movement of merchants, administrators, scholars, and religious figures, facilitating broader processes of cultural and social interaction.

Particular attention is given to the Mongol period in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when the political integration of large parts of Eurasia under Mongol rule significantly enhanced long‑distance mobility and commercial exchange. During this period, southern routes linking Iran with India gained renewed importance within the wider Eurasian trade system. The paper argues that these networks played a key role in connecting Central Asia with the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean world, thereby reshaping patterns of economic geography and regional connectivity.

By proposing the concept of the “Jade Road,” this study seeks to highlight the importance of southern Silk Road corridors in the spatial reconfiguration of Central Eurasia. Reconsidering these routes allows for a more balanced understanding of Eurasian historical connectivity and emphasizes the role of Iran and the Persian Gulf as critical intermediaries between Central Asia and the Indian Ocean world