In this essay I attempt to examine the relationships between rural-urban migration in modern day Kazakhstan using the case study of post- Socialist Kazakh Republic and Soviet Alma-Ata as its capital in the 1920s (Alexander, Buchli, and Humphrey, 16, 2007). Withstanding an era of emerging neoliberalism, urbanization and globalization, post socialist Kazakhstan’s urban landscape in the context of Almaty’s rapid urbanization had profoundly changed the experience of the city, precisely due to the influx of rural migrants from the districts nearby such as Kaskelen, Esik, Burunday, Talgar, and etc. One of the distinct characteristics that makes Almaty extraordinary is its urban agglomeration that was largely influenced by the Soviet regime and order.
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Based on my personal experiences, the villagers “auldiktar” were and still are misrepresented, misunderstood, and poorly judged as Yessenova in Routes and Roots of Kazakh identity: Urban migration in postsocialist Kazakhstan notes, “The claims of rural/urban identity manifest unequal power relations within the nation, echoing developmental discrepancies between the city and the village during socialism and thereafter…who perceive recent migrants as potentially risky, unstable, and unfit members of urban society” (662, 2005). Likewise, Davis in Planet of Slums examines the dynamics of Global South’s urbanization, calling it “urbanization of world poverty” and its inevitable link to the colonialism, imperialism, and nowadays capitalism (51, 2006). Davis refers to the British colonialists as “the greatest slum-builders of all time” implying the laws, rules, and regulations that controlled the local population, mostly marginalized population, where people could not meet the basic needs of life, in terms of unaffordable housings, poor or even absence of sanitation, and etcetera; “Their policies in Africa forced the local labor force to live in precarious shantytowns on the fringes of segregated and restricted cities” (52, …show more content…
Alexander, Buchli, and Humphrey note that, “Furthermore, the steppic region characterized by Russian mining activities mainly funded by American and British investment that translated into post-independence period oil and gas importance” (18, 2007). The myriad of these processes examined through the lens of modern history then formed the era of change; change into our current reality of impoverished existence in terms of the society and Kazakhstan as a whole as of under dictatorship and substantial foreign ownership of country’s natural resources, and thus vulnerability on the vagaries of the international market, as well as inflation of the currency and
Based on my personal experiences, the villagers “auldiktar” were and still are misrepresented, misunderstood, and poorly judged as Yessenova in Routes and Roots of Kazakh identity: Urban migration in postsocialist Kazakhstan notes, “The claims of rural/urban identity manifest unequal power relations within the nation, echoing developmental discrepancies between the city and the village during socialism and thereafter…who perceive recent migrants as potentially risky, unstable, and unfit members of urban society” (662, 2005). Likewise, Davis in Planet of Slums examines the dynamics of Global South’s urbanization, calling it “urbanization of world poverty” and its inevitable link to the colonialism, imperialism, and nowadays capitalism (51, 2006). Davis refers to the British colonialists as “the greatest slum-builders of all time” implying the laws, rules, and regulations that controlled the local population, mostly marginalized population, where people could not meet the basic needs of life, in terms of unaffordable housings, poor or even absence of sanitation, and etcetera; “Their policies in Africa forced the local labor force to live in precarious shantytowns on the fringes of segregated and restricted cities” (52, …show more content…
Alexander, Buchli, and Humphrey note that, “Furthermore, the steppic region characterized by Russian mining activities mainly funded by American and British investment that translated into post-independence period oil and gas importance” (18, 2007). The myriad of these processes examined through the lens of modern history then formed the era of change; change into our current reality of impoverished existence in terms of the society and Kazakhstan as a whole as of under dictatorship and substantial foreign ownership of country’s natural resources, and thus vulnerability on the vagaries of the international market, as well as inflation of the currency and