Territorial Belonging and Homeland Disjuncture: Uneven Territorialisations in Kazakhstan

2021/03/09 by Kristoffer M. Rees, Kristoffer Michael Rees, Nora Webb Williams +1
Social Sciences · #Diaspora, migration, transnational identity #Migration, Refugees, and Integration #Philippine History and Culture

paper · doi:10.1080/09668136.2021.1891206

openalex publication_date 2021/03/09 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30

Abstract

This article evaluates the relationships among state-framed and alternatively territorialised narratives of identity and belonging in Kazakhstan. Using survey data from 2017 and 2018, we argue that collective identity among Kazakhstan’s citizens is negotiated not just in terms of balancing ethnic and civic forms of state-centric national belonging, but also through varied forms and scales of attachment to place. Our analysis shows how collective identity in Kazakhstan draws on both traditional state-framed models of territorialisation and vernacular conceptions of homeland. We find significant variation in attachment among different ethnic and social groups within Kazakhstan.

Citations

• The territorial trap: The geographical assumptions of international relations theory
• The ‘diaspora’ diaspora
• Privileged Exclusion in Post-Soviet Kazakhstan: Ethnic Return Migration, Citizenship, and the Politics of (Not) Belonging
• Shedding Russianness, recasting Ukrainianness: the post-Euromaidan dynamics of ethnonational identifications in Ukraine