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Exploring “North” and “South” in post-Soviet Bishkek: Discourses and perceptions of rural-urban migration

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Moya Flynn  and
Natalya Kosmarskaya
Moya Flynn*
Affiliation:
Central and East European Studies, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland
Natalya Kosmarskaya
Affiliation:
Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia
*
∗Corresponding author. Email: Moya.Flynn@glasgow.ac.uk
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Abstract

In this paper we explore, through the narratives and perspectives of “old residents” in post-Soviet Bishkek, the dominant discourse which has emerged towards rural migrants arriving to the city from other areas of Kyrgyzstan from the late Soviet period onwards. We investigate the existence of a primarily “antagonistic” discourse in relation to the migrants and analyze this in detail to understand how it illuminates wider concerns amongst residents about what is occurring in their city, and about wider processes of social change in Kyrgyzstan. The paper provides a revealing insight into the processes of urban change in post-Soviet Central Asia, and demonstrates the ways in which confrontation with the everyday harsh realities of post-Soviet transformation can lead to the negative “othering” of one group of urban residents by another. We also demonstrate how the “old residents”’ perceptions of migrants reveal important insights into emerging notions and constructions of identity in the post-Soviet period, related in this case to understandings of “North” and “South'1 and related concepts of what is “urban” and what is “Kyrgyz”.

Keywords

migrationurbanruralidentityKyrgyzstanBishkek
Type
Special Section: The Autonomy of Minority Literature
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 40 , Issue 3 , May 2012 , pp. 453 - 471
Copyright
Copyright © 2012 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

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