Kazakh Diaspora in Kyrgyzstan: History of Settlement and Ethnographic Peculiarities
Kazakh Diaspora in Kyrgyzstan: History of Settlement and Ethnographic Peculiarities

Summary/Abstract: The article focuses on the most significant stages of the formation of the Kazakh diaspora in the Kyrgyz Republic, to point out what reasons contributed to the rugged Kazakh migration process in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and how it affected the forms and types of their settlements (compact or disperse). The researched issues also include the identification of factors provoked by humans and the state to launch these migrations. Surprisingly enough, opposite to the claims made by independent Kazakhstan leadership in the early 2000s, the number of Kazakhs in Kyrgyzstan wishing to become repatriates to their native country is still far from the desired. Thus the article is an attempt to find out what reasons and factors influence the Kazakh residents’ desire to stay in the neighboring country as a minority. To provide the answer, the authors analyzed the dynamics of statistical variations in the number of migrants and the reasons of these changes. The other key point in tracing what characteristic features separate Kazakhs in Kyrgyzstan and their kinsmen in Kazakhstan is the archival data, statistical, historical, and field sources, which provide a systematic overview of the largely unstudied pages of the history of the Kazakh diaspora.

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