Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on the children of ethnic Kazakh migrants who came to Kazakhstan from neighboring countries after 1991. I argue that they have constructed an idea of “home” which differs greatly from that of their parents. This is supported by interviews conducted during my ongoing research.

Paper long abstract:

In 1991, the newly independent Republic of Kazakhstan found itself faced with a litany of critical questions - namely, of how to consolidate Kazakhstan’s sovereignty and foster stability in the wake of Soviet rule. Nursultan Nazarbayev, with his ethnonationalist contingent, sought to achieve this, in part, by establishing a program of return for the millions of ethnic Kazakhs living outside of what was referred to as their ethnic and historical homeland. These “returnees” have been the subject of a body of literature that has focused on how these migrants understand the boundaries of their homeland. Some researchers posit that they are transmigrants, because they are able to negotiate the borders of “home” to encompass both the land of their birth and that of their ancestors - they “stretch” these boundaries to maintain relationships between their identities, communities, and subjectivities within both places. However, little work has been done considering how the children of these returnees, who migrated to Kazakhstan with their parents at a young age, have come to understand their own homeland. In this paper, I argue that these adult children have likely constructed an idea of home which differs greatly from that of their parents and that the lack of inquiry into their experiences constitutes a lacuna within the literature. This argument is supported by insights taken from interviews conducted during my ongoing research on this topic, and by literature from other cultural contexts which explores similar questions of the homeland among first-generation migrants and their children.