Mobile Students from Kazakhstan: Migration for Education or Education for Emigration?

The article discusses the results of an empirical sociological study on the migratory trajectories of mobile students from Kazakhstan. The study included a series of in-depth interviews and a survey aimed at establishing why they decided to study abroad, how they chose the country to study, and what they were planning to do upon graduation. The ‘push-pull plus’ model was applied to bridge economic and sociological aspects of educational migration from Kazakhstan and to overcome structure-agency dichotomy. Profiles of mobile students across three types of migratory trajectories were developed: Immediate Returnees migrating for educational purposes, i.e. maximisation of utility; Deferred Returnees, whose rational choice is combined with desire and aspiration; and Definite Non-returnees, for whom education is a means of emigration prompted by deprivation due to the situation in the home country, which creates predisposing and proximate drivers.

Identity of Kazakhs of Mongolia in Everyday Life

The article deals with the mechanisms of functioning and reproduction of ethnic identity among Kazakhs living in the territory of Western Mongolia. The research, based on the field studies, presents the ethnography of everyday life of Kazakh diaspora. Preliminary analysis showed that it is the ethnic group united by the diaspora that is capable of consolidating the particularities and preserving its ethnic identity. Different conditions and mechanisms for the formation of ethno-cultural identity in a specific diaspora pre-determine its differences in structure, priority elements, and sustainability. The authors comes to the conclusion that the objects of traditional material culture, which are assigned the role of “ethnic markers”, as well as the articulation in public space of ethnic, tribal and religious identity contribute to the process of maintaining and representing the ethno-cultural identity of Kazakhs of Mongolia