Osh-Bishkek-Almaty-Moscow and return? How Different Generations Sustain Their Livelihoods in Multilocal Settings

Abstract

Bishkek and cities in Russia and Kazakhstan are major destinations for labour migrants from rural South Kyrgyzstan. Next to search for a better income, younger men and women also migrate for education and to escape traditions like early marriage. Children and elderly people are left behind. In Kazakhstan and Russia the majority of migrants work de facto illegal on territory, where they would have had the same citizenship and rights only some years ago, including all stigma and risks for their livelihoods illegality implies. However, the way in which migrants appropriate their working and living spaces strongly depends on gender, age and the cities they have been migrated to. While elderly often feel that this separation of the traditional family is only temporary, younger people start placing their lives at other places than where they originally come from. This lecture will look into the multilocal setting of families and at the different and sometimes controversial perceptions and experiences of migration and their consequences for different generations involved.